Ford Motor Corp on Friday said it planned to cut “more than 5,000” jobs in Germany as part of a major restructuring to boost profitability at the US automaker’s European operations.
The group aims to carry out the jobs cull through voluntary redundancies and early retirement, a spokeswoman told reporters.
“This announcement is part of the Ford restructuring announced in January in Europe with the goal of returning to profitable business in Europe as soon as possible,” the spokeswoman said.
“The aim is to cut more than 5,000 jobs in the most socially responsible way possible,” she said, without detailing how the cuts would be divided among Ford’s operations in Cologne, Aachen and Saarlouis.
The announcement, which was shared with Ford Germany employees earlier on Friday, comes after Ford in January said that “thousands” of jobs would be cut as part of a revamp of its loss-making European division.
Ford employs about 53,000 people across Europe, with about 24,000 of them in Germany.
The second-biggest US automaker plans to respond to business challenges with a global reorganization, including a huge cost-cutting drive and partnership deals with rivals.
Ford last year announced that it would halt production of almost all sedans and small cars in the US to save US$11 billion.
In the UK, the automaker plans to axe 1,150 jobs, according to Britain’s Unite union.
In France, Ford plans to close a plant making gearboxes near Bordeaux, costing 800 jobs and drawing the ire of the French government.
In Russia, Ford said it would launch a strategic review of its joint venture Ford Sollers.
Like other automakers who have teamed up to reduce costs in an increasingly competitive industry, Ford earlier this year announced an alliance with Volkswagen AG to jointly develop commercial vans and pickups from 2022. The two companies are also in talks about potentially cooperating on electric and self-driving cars.
In related news, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is charging Volkswagen and former chief executive officer Martin Winterkorn with defrauding US investors during an emissions scandal.
The commission said that from April 2014 to May 2015, Volkswagen issued more than US$13 billion in bonds and assets-backed securities in US markets when senior executives knew that more than 500,000 vehicles in the country grossly exceeded legal vehicle emissions limits.
The complaint claims that Volkswagen made false and misleading statements to investors and underwriters about vehicle quality, environmental compliance and the company’s financial standing, which gave Volkswagen a financial benefit when it issued securities at more attractive rates for the company, the commission said.
Volkswagen on Friday said that the commission was simply repeating unproven claims about Winterkorn.
“Regrettably, more than two years after Volkswagen entered into landmark, multibillion-[US] dollar settlements in the United States with the Department of Justice, almost every state and nearly 600,000 consumers, the SEC is now piling on to try to extract more from the company,” the company said in a statement.
Volkswagen has paid about US$20 billion in fines and civil settlements. It has also pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the US and several managers, including Winterkorn, were charged there.
Additional reporting by AP
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to