Spokesman Peter Marlow would not divulge figures on how many staff had been affected by the reorganisation, though he acknowledged that jobs had gone in other locations in Europe and the Americas besides Toronto, where redundancies were reported yesterday.

In keeping with the aims of the reorganisation, Marlow said JD Power had taken on more staff in Singapore and Michigan to cover the additional workload. Singapore, he said, was picked to serve as one of the company’s main research hubs so as to take wider advantage of a cost-effective approach staff had developed there to mitigate for the high costs of fieldwork in the country.

As in Toronto, Marlow said other offices affected by the cuts would “become more client-facing”, dealing principally with sales and customer service. This approach was first piloted in Japan two years ago, Marlow said.