SONY WILL close five or six factories, reduce investment and cut 8,000 jobs globally, it announced yesterday, in an attempt to stay profitable through the slump in consumer electronics spending.
The Japanese group said the cuts were intended to save 100 billion yen (€842 million) from costs in the fiscal year to March 2010.
The 8,000 job losses are about 5 per cent of the 160,000 employees in Sony's electronics division and a similar number of part-time workers will go as well.
One of the plant closures will be in France, but Sony would not name the other sites to be affected.
The company has been hurt by the weakness of the euro against the yen and said it would raise prices to compensate. "We want to raise prices in Europe from January," said Sony senior vice-president Naofumi Hara, adding that the price change would vary by country and product.
Sony declined to say how much the restructuring would cost, prompting fears it would make a net loss in the current financial year. The company cut its net profit forecast by 38 per cent to Y150 billion at the end of October and conditions for electronics companies have deteriorated since.
Sony's pain is worse than that of South Korean rivals such as Samsung, which have the benefit of a falling currency. But downbeat remarks from Samsung's vice-president in charge of investor relations suggest the weaker won cannot offset the severity of the slowdown. - (Financial Times service)
