Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic is to lay off about 15,000 staff because of the global recession, the company has announced.
Half the redundancies are in Japan, with the rest of the cuts being made globally, a Panasonic spokeswoman told ZDNet UK on Wednesday. The staff reductions are to be made by March 2010.
In addition, Panasonic announced that 27 factories are to close worldwide — 13 in Japan and 14 around the world.
The spokeswoman was unable to confirm whether any of Panasonic's UK staff would be affected by the cuts. The company's UK headquarters are in Bracknell, Berkshire, while its European research and development facility is in Cardiff, where electronics products are also manufactured. Panasonic's UK fabs include a factory in Newport that employs 500. Panasonic has about 4,000 UK staff.
The redundancies were announced following Panasonic's third-quarter results, which showed consolidated group sales fall by 20 percent year-on-year. The company made ¥464.7bn (£3.6bn) less this quarter, compared with the same period last year. Overall group sales this quarter were ¥1,879.9bn.
Panasonic said its business had suffered from a drop in consumer spending, combined with a surge in the yen.
"The current financial crisis [that] originated in the United States has spread across the world and the company's outlook [in] the business environment has been extremely uncertain," said Panasonic in a statement.
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"The company's business conditions have worsened particularly since last October, due mainly to the rapid appreciation of the yen, sluggish consumer spending worldwide and ever-intensified price competition."
Operating profit in the third quarter was down 84 percent year on year, from ¥165.4bn last year to ¥26.4bn this year.
Panasonic joins other Japanese manufacturers that have been severely affected by the downturn. Hitachi, Sony and Toshiba have all warned of losses this year.
Talkback
At 14:30hrs 14 Feb 09 http://shop.panasonic.co.uk/icat/flatpanels this page had numerous Plasma and LCD TV's for 00.01p. I bought two 32" LCD TV's and 12 60" Plasma's for 14p plus delivery.
A disgruntled employee I guess. If you are logged into your account there are even more 01p bargins. The 137cm plasma RRP £2050.99 logged in price 0.01p.
Does anybodyt know if they have to honor the SALE??
could you please inform me as to where you got the info about the panasonic website being hacked?
all i could find, was that this website was hacked, along with all the details of anyone who purchased items during that time. however this is not definative.
i am also one of them who purchased...hey if the deal goes through, gonna sell me a 60incher for less than a tenner? lol!
A friend rang me to ask whether the site was genuine. The minute I saw it I knew that it was either an Sql injection or a pissed off employee had left a back door, as all their new products were on Sale for 00.01p.
I dont know if the sales will be honored, but all day Saturday 14th the prices were marked down to 00.01p and by early evening the E Shop had been pulled for "maintenance"
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Hey thanks for that. Do you know what, im getting kinda worried. I did a little investigating and rumour has it the site was hacked, and details were being intercepted by an unknown source or logged from their end by an employee for fraudulent use.
Do you think we should get in contact with the bank and get everything changed? They have my name, address, date of birth, but if i get the bank details changed over they cant do anything with my old ones.
Have you intentionally disabled private messages? You can activate it in your profile page.
I am not over concerned, my banking is secure and there is no way in for them to any money.....Personal details will do them no good either.
Panasonic will have to make a statement at some point and payback or delivery the ordered items...
I was told it was a disgruntled employee who was just out to piss off the senior management...
Time will tell but I wouldnt worry too much
Panasonic explained on Monday what had happened to its systems to cause them to start offering goods at 1p. It was, the company said via a spokesperson, caused by an integration issue that came up when an SAP systems and another one, unnamed, were going through that process.
For more details see my blog post <A HREF="http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10012156o-2000331827b,00.htm">which is here</A>.
The company also said that anyone who ordered goods would have the money refunded. All 1p. Ah, well.