"Starting today, the next phase of our plan begins as we reorganise our global workforce. Unfortunately, this means we will have to say goodbye to some of our Vice colleagues," she said in the email.

"In this strategic restructure, some departments will get smaller while others will expand," she said.

The new operating structure no longer divides the company up by country, but into Studios, News, Digital TV and creative agency Virtue, with support functions like sales, marketing and legal to report into Brooklyn and other centralised offices.

This comes after Vice Studios' film The Report had one of the largest sales in Sundance history and its documentary Fyre quickly became a Netflix sensation.

Some roles will be centralised, with "overlap" to be eliminated.

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"It touches everyone at Vice – from finance to TV and editorial to IT – all departments at every level will see some impact," she said.

"While this makes us a stronger business going forward, it is difficult for all of us to go through and we do not make these decisions lightly."

Vice Asia Pacific chief executive Hosi Simon followed her email with one of his own to his teams later on Saturday, apologising the global note reached local employees' inboxes during the night.

"I know this is a very difficult moment for everyone, but I also know that for those leaving us, you will bring your passion and spirit to other places and be very successful," he said.

"The reorganisation of our operations in Asia will take place this coming week."

He said there had been "rapid success and growth" in Vice Studios, Virtue, Digital TV and News locally.

A Vice Australia source said the weekend emails were "very vague" and the redundancies appeared to affect a number of roles across editorial.

They said staff members affected by the restructure had been given written notice on Monday, with the consultation period ending on Thursday.