Ford's "Way Forward" to eliminate about 30,000 jobs
Detroit, USA: Ford, the second-largest car maker in the United States, has finally announced its "Way Forward" plan that will seek to eliminate between 25,000 and 30,000 jobs and also shut fourteen plants over the next seven years. The new road map is aimed at returning the company's core North American business to profit by 2008.

The cuts will result in one in four of Ford's 122,000 North American workers losing their jobs. Ford has already announced plans to cut 4,000 white-collar jobs by the end of March this year.

Mark Fields, Ford's North American chief, announcing the "Way Forward" plan said, "Our plants are running at three quarters of capacity and that is unsustainable. This has significant implications for our labour force." Fields also said, "We need to operate as a smaller company in the way we make our decisions.

In a statement headlined "Ford Fights Back", the car company said by 2008, production will be stopped at assembly plants in St Louis, Atlanta, Michigan and Ohio. A castings plant in Ontario, Canada will also be shut. Work will stop at another two assembly plants to be determined later this year. In total, 14 facilities, including seven assembly plants, will cease production by 2012.

The restructuring is Ford's second in four years. Under the first plan, Ford closed five plants and cut 35,000 jobs, but its North American operations failed to turn around.
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Livedoor chief arrested
Tokyo: Takafumi Horie, the iconoclastic CEO of the internet empire Livedoor, was last night arrested on suspicion of spreading false financial information to investors to boost his company's share price.

Prosecutors said in a statement that Horie and three other Livedoor executives had been arrested on suspicion of deliberately spreading false corporate buyout information about Livedoor affiliates to boost its share price. Horie, 33, faces up to five years in prison if found guilty of breaking the securities law. Along with Horie, the police also took Ryoji Miyauchi, Fumito Okamoto and Osanari Nakamura into detention following questioning.

Local media reported that prosecutors are also examining claims that Livedoor, which Horie launched with a ¥6m (£30,000) loan in 1996 funnelled cash from newly acquired firms into its own accounts to hide a ¥1bn (£4.8m) loss for the business year that ended in September 2004.

Horie won fans for his ambitious assaults on Japan's business old guard as Livedoor, with its portfolio of 50 internet-related firms, racked up profits with share buyouts, shunning the traditional route to wealth through increased sales. But Livedoor has lost about 64%, or £2.25bn, in value since the raid last Monday on its headquarters in the luxurious Roppongi Hills complex, Tokyo.

Shares in the firm plummeted again yesterday to ¥256, down the maximum ¥80 permitted in a single day. Only a week ago the shares were worth ¥696 each.

The investigation has sparked turmoil in the stock market. Yesterday the Nikkei fell more than 2% to close at 15,336 points. Japan's benchmark stock index has plunged 6.7% in the past week. Last week the Tokyo Stock Exchange placed Livedoor shares under a warning after it had failed to disclose enough information about the allegations.
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RIM appeal turned down by Supreme Court
Washington, USA: Embattled wireless device maker, Research In Motion Ltd. lost its bid Monday to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review a patent-suit ruling that could force the company to stop selling its market-leading BlackBerry wireless device in the U.S.

The ruling increases pressure on Research In Motion to end a protracted legal battle by reaching a settlement. Some analysts estimate that such a settlement could cost RIM up to a US$1bn.
Research In Motion, based in Waterloo, Ontario, had asked the high court to reverse a lower-court ruling on the grounds that U.S. patent law shouldn't apply to the Canadian company. A Virginia jury found in November 2002 that the technology behind the popular BlackBerry violated patents held by NTP Inc., a small patent-holding firm based in Arlington, Va.

The district judge overseeing the case now has to decide whether to reinstate an injunction against the U.S. sale of BlackBerry devices if the two sides can't reach a settlement. A hearing on the matter may occur as early as February before Judge James Spencer, who late last year refused to certify a previous $450 million settlement between the parties.

The dispute has caused BlackBerry's customers to switch to rival suppliers of handheld e-mail devices, such as Nokia and Motorola.

Meanwhile, Research In Motion is still pursuing efforts to have NTP's patents invalidated by the U.S. Patent Office, which has issued preliminary rulings rejecting most of NTP's prior patent claims and is re-examining the validity of all the disputed patents.
RIM wants the district court to wait until the patent office issues its final ruling before enforcing an injunction. However, the lower court judge has said patent-office re-examinations wouldn't influence his rulings in the case.
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