After announcing last month that it would cut 9 percent of staff, BenQ Mobile, headquartered in Munich, Germany, has asked upper level managers to accept one-third cuts in their salaries or quit, according to a German newspaper report.
Parent company BenQ Corp (
BenQ took over Siemens AG's loss-making handset unit last year to form BenQ Mobile, which began operations last October.
Employees of BenQ's handset manufacturing factory in Germany have been guaranteed jobs until the end of the year, when BenQ plans to shut the plant because production is only at half of capacity, the daily said, citing a BenQ Mobile employee.
BenQ Mobile has 7,000 employees around the globe with 3,300 in Germany. This would translate into about 825 staff potentially being laid off.
To turn the firm around, BenQ Mobile's chief executive officer Clemens Joos plans to cut costs by 500 million euros (US$644 million) by the end of the year, the report said.
One female financial manager was dismissed because she was not strict enough in executing the cost-cutting plan, according to the report.
When the company announced the plan to cut jobs in Germany last month, company spokesman Eric Yu (游克用) said the layoffs were part of BenQ's ongoing restructuring to enhance competitiveness, and added that the move would not affect the firm's overall operations.
BenQ's sales increased 30.54 percent to NT$69.76 billion (US$2.12 billion) for the first half of the year, but it reported losses because of the acquisition of Siemens' handset division.
Deutsche Bank Securities estimated last month that BenQ would report an after-tax loss of NT$3 billion for the second quarter, and lowered its target price for the company to NT$36 from NT$42.
Shares of BenQ dropped NT$0.25 to close at NT$17.85 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange last Friday.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS