BMW, the world’s largest premium car maker, said several 100 of the permanent staff employed by the company has agreed to redundancy packages as it seeks to cut thousands of jobs in a bid to improve profitability.

The company also reaffirmed its sales forecast for the full year which include record sales volumes for all three brands. “Excluding the exceptional gain on the Rolls-Royce exchangeable bond recognised in 2007, we are aiming to achieve higher pre-tax group earnings in 2008 than in 2007,” CEO Norbert Reithofer said in a statement ahead of the company’s annual shareholder meeting today.

The company did not gave the exact number of employees who have opted for redundancy packages. BMW is aiming to cut 8,100 jobs worldwide and that includes 3,100 permanent staff to improve profitability.

Voluntary redundancies are the key since the company has a labor agreement which prevents it from laying off German employees till the end of 2013.

The cuts will save around 500 million Euros starting 2009 as BMW works ahead to reduce its initially budgeted cost by 6 Billion Euros by year 2012.

Reithofer also repeated on Thursday his pledge to increase the level of shareholders’ participation in the success of BMW.

“We see the higher dividend for the financial year 2007 as being the first step,” he said. BMW planned to distribute 694 million euros for 2007, with the dividend up 51 percent at 1.06 euros for each common share.

BMW added it had not decided whether to buy back up to 10 percent of its share capital, a step it proposed to shareholders.

Shares in BMW were 0.7 percent lower at 37.43 euros by 0907 GMT, similar to the 0.6 percent fall on the German benchmark DAX index.