Panasonic Corp is set to cut its chip division workforce in half, axing thousands of jobs as the electronics giant overhauls its battered balance sheet after record losses, Japanese media reports said yesterday.
The plan to shrink Panasonic’s money-losing chip business could also see it sell off some chip manufacturing plants, the leading business daily Nikkei Shimbun said, without citing sources.
Panasonic, which has chip factories in Japan and overseas, would axe 7,000 jobs from the unit by March 2015 from a total of 14,000 employees, through an unspecified number of layoffs, early retirements and moving workers to other divisions, it said.
Panasonic would take a ￥50 billion (US$510 million) charge over the job reductions for the fiscal year that ends in March, but expects improved earnings to offset the impact, it added.
The struggling firm — recovering from combined losses topping US$15 billion in the past two fiscal years — has started talks to sell some overseas plants to Israeli chipmaker TowerJazz with a deal likely to be reached before early next year, the Nikkei said.
Japan’s Jiji Press news agency ran a similar story, saying the plan was aimed at putting a bigger focus on more profitable chips found in vehicles and industrial equipment, moving away from those found in televisions and mobile phones.
Panasonic responded that “we are studying our chip business strategy from various angles, but nothing has been decided.”
The firm may also sell buildings that house the Osaka headquarters of its Sanyo subsidiary as part of the wider restructuring effort, Japanese media said.
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
For the second year in a row, a Brazilian movie has wowed international audiences and critics, securing multiple Oscar nominations and drawing fresh interest in the Latin American giant’s film industry. Experts say the success of The Secret Agent, which has won four Oscar nominations, a year after I Am Still Here won Brazil its first Oscar, is no fluke, with a bit of a push from the country’s political climate. “This is neither a coincidence nor a miracle. It is the result of a lot of work, consistent policies, and, of course, talent,” Ilda Santiago, director of the Rio International Film
AI SPLURGE: The four major US tech companies have lost more than US$950 billion in value since releasing earnings and outlooks, while equipment makers were gaining Four of the biggest US technology companies together have forecast capital expenditures that would reach about US$650 billion this year — a flood of cash earmarked for new data centers and all the gear within them. The spending planned by Alphabet Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp, all in pursuit of dominance in the still-nascent market for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, is a boom without a parallel this century. Each of the companies’ estimates for this year is expected either near or surpass their budgets for the past three years combined. They would set a high-watermark for capital spending
IShowSpeed, a 21-year-old African-American influencer, has raced a cheetah, leapt with Maasai warriors and drawn huge crowds in a month-long tour of Africa that has also busted cliches about the continent. The YouTube and Twitch star’s tour, which started on Dec. 29 last year, took him to 20 countries, showing his tens of millions of followers a different side of Africa as he visited a diamond mine in Botswana, discovered Ethiopia’s rich cuisine and attended the Africa Cup of Nations football final in Morocco. IShowSpeed — born in Cincinnati, Ohio as Darren Jason Watkins Jr. — is one of the most followed
RSS