Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Lenovo Group Ltd. said it will cut about 11 percent of its workforce, amid a global recession that forced the company to forecast its first loss in 11 quarters. The shares fell by the most in almost eight years.

Lenovo, China’s biggest personal-computer maker, will eliminate about 2,500 jobs, leading to savings of about $300 million in the year ending March 2010, the Raleigh, North Carolina-based company said today. The computer maker said it will book a charge of about $150 million this fiscal year.

The manufacturer of Thinkpad laptops said it probably had a “material loss” for the quarter ended Dec. 31 because personal-computer demand fell. The latest reductions will top the more than 2,000 jobs it cut in 2006 and 2007 at the unit acquired from International Business Machines Corp. to turn around the previously unprofitable operations.

“Not many people were expecting the company to post a loss last quarter,” said Frank He, who rates Lenovo “hold” at BOC International in Hong Kong. “This shows overseas sales are in even worse shape than anticipated.”

The shares fell 16 percent to HK$2.18 as of 10:13 a.m. on the Hong Kong stock exchange, compared with a 1.6 percent decline for the benchmark Hang Seng Index.

The company will reduce executive compensation by 30 percent to 50 percent as part of measures to reorganize its business, Lenovo said in a statement. It will also combine its China and Asia Pacific units.

Gross Profit

“Although the integration of the IBM PC business for the past three years was a success, our last quarter’s performance did not meet our expectations,” Chairman Yang Yuanqing said in the statement. The company is seeking “to ensure that in an uncertain economy, our business operates as efficiently and effectively as possible, and continues to grow in the future.”

Lenovo said revenue and gross profit in the three months ended Dec. 31 probably declined from a year earlier because of lower demand from the commercial segment and the slowing economy in China, its main market. The company last posted a loss in the quarter ended March 2006.

Lenovo is the world’s fourth-biggest PC maker by market share after Hewlett-Packard, Dell Inc. and Acer Inc., according to Framingham, Massachusetts-based researcher IDC.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lee in Hong Kong at wlee37@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 7, 2009 21:21 EST