Japan Airlines Corp, restructuring under state supervision, is likely to tap financial institutions for around 170 billion yen in additional loans while considering cutting more than 1,000 jobs through an early retirement program after October, sources familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
Source: JapanToday
Yahoo Inc is moving the product development team for one of its key Web properties to Taiwan, the latest change within the Internet company as it moves to cut costs and revamp its online offering.
The product development and operations teams for the Yahoo News division will be based out of Taiwan, said Yahoo spokeswoman Kim Rubey. The types of jobs moving overseas include product management, engineering and user interface design, Rubey said.
Source: Forbes
China’s state-owned enterprises may unilaterally terminate commodities contracts as they try to cut massive losses from financial derivatives, an industry source told Caijing on August 28.
According to the source, China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has sent notice to six foreign financial institutions informing them that several state-owned enterprise will reserve the right to default on commodities contracts signed with those institutions.
Most investment banks may “just swallow” any losses arising from canceled contracts, the executive said, adding that any losses are usually made up for with compensating trades.
Source: Caijing.com.cn
Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) may slash more than a third of its 8,000-strong workforce and outsource parts of the business to cope with a sharp decline in travel demand, its president said on Thursday.
Source: Reuters
“Chinese stock and property markets have bubbled up again. It was fueled by bank lending and inflation fear. I think that Chinese stocks and properties are 50-100% overvalued. The odds are that both will adjust in the fourth quarter. However, both might flare up again sometime next year. Fluctuating within a long bubble could be the dominant trend for the foreseeable future. The bursting will happen when the US dollar becomes strong again. The catalyst could be serious inflation that forces the Fed to raise interest rate.” - Andy Xie, former Morgan Stanley Analyst
Source: Ritholtz.com, my1510.CN
In the last decade, GE has closed over 15 factories in Ohio and downsized numerous others. Since 1980, employment in GE Lighting has dropped by 68 percent.
A large chunk of that manufacturing has gone to China, and now GE plans to send even more to China in the wake of new clean energy policies.
Source: HuffingtonPost
~News submitted by David
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plans to close its tire plant in the Philippines by Sept. 30 as it trims production capacity. About 500 jobs will be eliminated.
Source: CNBC, AP
~News submitted by upthecreek
The high-tech industry might finally be hitting rock bottom, according to Forrester Research, which Tuesday forecast global IT spending to decline by nearly 11% in 2009 before vendors and end-user organizations begin to see some signs of recovery later this year and early next.
Source: NetworkWorld
U.S. and European stocks tumbled, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index down the most in two months, as the World Bank said the recession will be deeper than previously forecast.
Source: Bloomberg
General Motors has reached a preliminary agreement for the sale of its Hummer brand of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks to a machinery company in western China with ambitions to become a carmaker.
G.M. said that the deal would save about 3,000 jobs in the United States, including those at its 153 domestic dealerships, and that Hummer would remain based in the United States.
Source: NY Times
Nike Inc will slash 5 percent of its 35,000-strong global workforce in a sweeping overhaul to boost competitiveness. Nike has already halted production at three of its Chinese factories. About 500 positions will be axed at about 500 positions at its HQ, Beaverton, Oregon.
Source: Reuters
According to Dow Jones, Morning Star: “Singapore Minister for Manpower Gan Kim Yong Wednesday said that layoffs during the first quarter of 2009 is likely to have crossed 10, 000.”
~News submitted by upthecreek
According to WSJ: “Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. said Monday its fiscal fourth-quarter net profit rose 4.7% from a year earlier but painted a gloomy picture for the current fiscal year due to the global economic meltdown.
TCS, India’s largest software exporter by revenue said it expects a fall in its billing rates in the current fiscal year which began April 1. “
Update 1 (4-20-2009)
According to Reuters: “Oracle Corp plans to enter the computer hardware market by buying Sun Microsystems Inc for more than $7 billion, swooping in after Sun’s talks with IBM fell apart.”
Update 2 (4-20-2009)
According to Reuters: “Microsoft’s chief executive said on Monday he was ‘very surprised‘ by Oracle Corp’s plans to buy Sun Microsystems Inc.”
According to WSJ: “Given Sun’s relatively low operating margins, there’s no doubt plenty of fat to cut in areas like sales and marketing.”
According to ComputerWorld: “More layoffs are expected at Sun Microsystems Inc. as a result of Oracle Corp.’s planned $7.4 billion acquisition, with one Wall Street analyst predicting today that as many as 10,000 people could lose their jobs at the Silicon Valley icon.”
Singapore economy may shrink as much as 9 percent this year, the most since independence in 1965, as a deepening global recession drives down exports and manufacturing.
Companies probably fired more than 10,000 workers in the first three months of 2009, the Straits Times cited Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as saying last week.
Source: Bloomberg
Nike Inc plans to halt its production at three shoe factories in China and one in Vietnam.
Source: CNBC, Reuters
~News submitted by upthecreek
Weeks after slashing nearly 5,000 jobs, IBM is expected to shift the work of a large number of U.S. workers to IBM employees working in India, the latest example of a successful company that is continuing to slash costs and take advantage of cheap Asian labor, WSJ reported.
Source: WSJ, Fox Business News
Update (March, 25, 2009): IBM to cut 5,000 jobs in U.S: According to Reuters: “The job cuts will account for over 4 percent of IBM’s U.S. workforce, which totaled around 115,000 at the end of 2008. The sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue, said the cuts will mostly be in IBM’s global services business, which includes outsourcing and consulting services.”
BusinessWeek also reports (”IBM Cuts Jobs As It Seeks Stimulus Money“): “..the company would be cutting high-skill positions domestically as it and others jockey for new business from the $787 billion stimulus package Congress enacted in February”
Nokia said Tuesday that it planned to eliminate 1,700 jobs, roughly 3 percent of its work force, as demand for phones continued to sag.
The company said 700 workers would be laid off in Finland and the rest elsewhere in Europe, Asia and North America. The layoffs are to take place in Nokia’s devices and markets divisions, which produce, market and sell mobile phones, and in a unit responsible for long-term corporate strategy.
Source: NYTimes
According to Reuters: “Lenovo Group, the world’s fourth-largest maker of personal computers, will eliminate 450 jobs in China, a company official said, as it cuts costs in a bid to return to profitability in 2010.”
Asia is likely to have 7.2 million more jobless people in 2009 than last year due to fallout from the global economic crisis, the International Labor Organization said.
It forecast the ranks of unemployed workers would likely balloon to 97 million in 2009 in Asia, the world economy’s star performer in recent years but where a third of the population still live on a little more than $1 a day.
“As global demand for workers contracts, the flow of migrant workers from developing Asia will moderate in 2009,” the ILO report said. “For labor-sending countries, this will exacerbate the challenge of mitigating job losses and generating new employment domestically.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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