Rolls-Royce to cut more senior management positions

LONDON, March 10 (Reuters) - Rolls-Royce, the British engineering company under pressure after consecutive profit warnings, said on Thursday it would shed more senior managers as part of its turnaround plan.

The company, which makes engines used to power aeroplanes and ships, is reducing its senior manager count by 150 under plans revealed to staff on Thursday, on top of the 50 positions it has said it would cut in the last four months.

Warren East, brought in as chief executive in July to help revive the company, announced a restructuring programme last November with the aim of saving between 150 million pounds and 200 million pounds ($304 million) a year, streamlining senior management and improving decision making.

Before the restructuring started, Rolls-Royce had about 2,000 senior managers, and the review of that group is still ongoing.

"Our ongoing transformation programme is designed to remove complexity and reduce cost by simplifying our processes as well as our structure," a spokeswoman for the company said.

In February, Rolls-Royce halved its final dividend to shore up its finances, the company's first cut for 24 years, after reporting a 16 percent drop in 2015 profits and guiding that profit would be 650 million pounds lower this year.

($1 = 0.6990 pounds) (Reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Mark Potter)