The devastating impact comes after the collapse of Irish sports broadcaster Setanta on Monday night.

Now the customer services provider has entered into a 30 day consultation period that will see a maximum of 100 jobs cut at its base in John Smith Business Park.

Staff affected could include those working in billing and IT.

Jamie Mackinlay, commercial director said that the company, which has around 1000 employees, had been making savings elsewhere to cope with pressures of the economic downturn, but regretted that in light of events redundancies would have to be made.

He said: "In the main Setanta have been a significant client of ours.
''We are fortunate that we haven't many call centre staff working for them, but we have people working in billing and finance reporting, logistics and technical projects.

"We are working as hard as we can to minimise any impact on our staff.

''However, it's only one of 20 clients we have.

''Our business is still in good shape.

"The reality is that there's a lot of pressure coming from the economic downturn. Setanta hasn't helped matters, it's provoked the situation."

He added: "We have been managing costs very tightly to minimise staff impact. We want to make sure we do the right thing for our staff.

"Our employee forum has been involved in the consultation. It's been a tough day for us but we are hoping to get through this with staff largely intact."

MGt has contracts with a number of different companies, including The National Art Collections Fund, BT Retail, Digital UK, Freeview, Sony Entertainment and Discovery Network's Europe.

Setanta, which has 1.2 million subscribers, has now ceased trading in Britain and has suspended the collection of subscription payments from customers in the UK.

The firm has been hit by loss of rights for both the English and Scottish Premier leagues after they failed to make payments.

Kirkcaldy MSP Marilyn Livingstone said she had been in discussion with the management of MGt.

She said: "I'm absolutely devastated that it's come to this.

''We have to hope that we can limit the number of redundancies and I will continue to work to see what we can do to support people who are losing their jobs.

''We are hoping the impact will be as limited as possible."

"MGt is a company that has been going from strength to strength.

''They are an excellent company with a highly skilled and committed workforce.

"I have concerns for the families this will impact on and I hope all agencies can work together to support people."

Kirkcaldy north Councillor Neil Crooks said that he hoped MGt would create more jobs in future.

He added: "I know they have a few irons in the fire. Hopefully it will be a short term impact for MGt. It's generally quite a robust business.

''Knowing the management of MGt I'm sure they will do their best to make sure as few people as possible are made redundant."