The South Korean electronics company is cutting jobs in Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand as it aims to slash thousands of jobs worldwide, according to people familiar with the details.

The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of the workforces in those markets although the numbers for every subsidiary could be different, said one of the people. The person asked not to be named since the matter is private. The job cuts may also be part of other overseas subsidiaries and could go as high as 10 percent in some markets.

The South Korean company has approximately 147,000 foreign employees, half of whom are in China, more than half of its over 267,800 employees in total, according to its latest sustainability report. It’s not laying off any employees in its home market.

Most of the affected staff are middle managers as well as certain first-line staff. They were reportedly informed of their retrenchment and severance package in private meetings with the HR managers and reporting managers yesterday, said a person familiar with the matter.

“Some overseas subsidiaries are conducting routine workforce adjustments to improve operational efficiency,” said a Samsung spokesperson. “The company has not set a target number for any particular positions”.

Samsung shares have slumped over 20 per cent this year as the world’s largest producer of memory chips and smartphones stumbles in key markets. The company is losing market to SK Hynix Inc. in AI application-specific integrated circuit memory chips and hasn’t really gained any ground against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in custom-designed chips for outsiders.

The new task of leading Samsung through its latest challenges now falls to Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee, who is the grandson of the company’s founder. He is 56 years old and was acquitted of charges of stock manipulation earlier this year after a long period of legal troubles.

But in an unusual twist, Samsung must play catch-up to SK Hynix, which gained the top spot for making high-bandwidth memory chips coupled with Nvidia Corp.’s artificial intelligence accelerators to train models of artificial intelligence. Samsung suddenly fired the head of its chip business this year and the newly appointed chief, Jun Young-hyun, gave the company this dire warning, “so get caught in a vicious cycle.”.

The company has downsized its workforce in the past while navigating the notoriously cyclical memory chip market. Samsung has recently cut around 10 percent of jobs in India and some parts of Latin America, according to one of the people.

Under the new push, Samsung is likely to cut less than 10 percent of the total overseas workforce of 147,000, said the person. The South Korean company would like to hold on to manufacturing jobs while it is cutting management and support functions. Specific labour laws and financial priorities are the reasons why certain regions will be affected.

Samsung has also clashed with South Korean employees. The largest of that tech corporation’s several unions threatened to stage a strike May 28 and may soon declare a walkout-one the company has never seen-before July 27.