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German industrial giant Siemens plans a major reorganisation of its business, affecting 11,600 workers.

The restructuring directly affects 7,600 jobs worldwide, with another 4,000 potentially affected as part of changes to its regional organisation.

However a company spokesman said: "Removing jobs in one area does not necessarily have to mean job cuts."

Some staff may be redeployed and Siemens is holding talks on the plans with its works council.

The company is reorganising itself into nine divisions from its current 16. It intends to cut annual group costs by 1bn euros ($1.4bn) from 2016.

The reorganisation follows a previous one that affected 15,000 posts. In a news conference on Friday, a Siemens spokesman said that the number of job losses from that revamp was 4,000.

Siemens employs 360,000 staff worldwide, with about a third of these in Germany.

Alstom battle

Earlier this month, Siemens said in its latest company report that it expected its markets "to remain challenging in fiscal 2014" with a recovery not expected until later in the year.

Siemens is keen to buy part of France's Alstom.

To do that, it will have to come up with a more attractive bid than US firm General Electric (GE), which is pushing hard to do a deal with the French industrial firm.

To sweeten its approach, GE recently promised to create 1,000 jobs in France.