Panasonic plans to close 27 plants, cut 15,000 jobs

04 February 2009

Panasonic Corporation, the world's largest plasma TV maker, faced with an expected $4.2 billion annual loss, said it would close 27 manufacturing units and cut about 15,000 jobs as it grapples with a stronger yen and slowing demand.

Panasonic, formerly known as Matsushita Electric, said it plans to announce another round of plant closures of a similar scale in the next business year.

Half the cuts, which would include both full-time regular employees and contract workers, will be in Japan and half overseas, the company said in a statement.

Panasonic has a global workforce of about 300,000 regular workers.

The company, posted a net loss of 63.1 billion yen for the October-December quarter versus a year-earlier profit of 115.2 billion yen. Quarterly operating profit tumbled 84 per cent to 26.4 billion yen.

The company cut its sales forecast from 8.50 trillion yen to 7.75 trillion yen and said it expects to register a pretax loss of 380 million yen against the earlier estimate of 100 million yen.