Panasonic Shares Rise After Report Company to Cut 40,000 Jobs
April 27, 2011, 9:13 PM EDTBy Mariko Yasu
April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Panasonic Corp. jumped the most in three weeks in Tokyo trading after the Nikkei newspaper reported the company plans to cut 40,000 jobs as part of a restructuring.
The shares gained as much as 2 percent, the biggest intraday gain since April 7, to 994 yen. They traded 1.8 percent higher at 9:40 a.m.
Panasonic, which has eliminated about 15,000 positions since the financial crisis in 2008, plans to carry out the reduction by the end of March 2013, mainly outside Japan, the report said without citing anyone. The job cuts would be the biggest among Japanese manufacturers, the report said.
“We’re not the source of the report,” Akira Kadota, a Tokyo-based spokesman, said by telephone today.
Panasonic, which spent 664.8 billion yen ($8.1 billion) purchasing stakes in Sanyo Electric Co. and Panasonic Electric Works Co. last year, will hold a press conference at 5:10 p.m. in Tokyo today to discuss its growth strategy. President Fumio Ohtsubo will speak at the meeting, which will follow the company’s earnings announcement at 3 p.m.
The company employs 380,000 people, the Nikkei report said.
--Editors: Anand Krishnamoorthy, Chua Kong Ho
To contact the reporter on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net.
