It’s an employment bloodbath at Sony this week, as 10,000 workers prepare to be out of a job.
Sony’s new CEO Kazuo Hirai said Thursday that the cuts are essential to his company’s “aggressive plan” to pull Sony from the sinking financial mess Sony finds itself in these days.
Hirai says the company’s annual loss will top $6 billion this year, which is twice the earlier projections made by analysts and industry watchers.
“We have heard a multitude of investor voices calling for change,” Hirai said. “Sony will change.”
“I am determined to transform and revive Sony. This is our only chance to change,” Hirai concluded.
The elimination of 10,000 jobs translates to a reduction of 6 percent of the company’s total workforce.
Sony and Japan’s two other major TV makers, Sharp Corp and Panasonic Corp, have been battered by weak demand, fierce competition and a profit-sapping strong yen that threatens the viability of Japan’s once-mighty television industry.
“Japan’s consumer electronics industry is facing defeat,” Fujio Ando, senior managing director at Chibagin Asset Management, told Reuters earlier in the week.
“Sony’s fundamental problem is that it has lost its competitiveness,” added Hideyuki Suzuki, general manager of research at SBI Securities.
