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Consumer, banking giants to slash 13,000 jobs
AFP - 1 hour 13 minutes ago
THE HAGUE (AFP) - - Electronics giant Philips and banking group ING said they were slashing 13,000 jobs worldwide Monday as the impact of what Barack Obama warned could be an "unprecedented" global crisis cut ever deeper.
The announcements by the two Dutch companies came ahead of expected confirmation that the steelmaker Corus is poised to cut over 3,500 jobs around the world, the majority in Britain.
Philips said it would cut 6,000 jobs to cope with the global slowdown which had pushed its results into the red and seen its sales slide.
The company said it suffered a net loss of 186 million euros (242 million dollars) for 2008 after a fourth quarter loss of 1.47 billion euros, largely due to a revaluation of its Lumileds diode light unit.
For 2008, sales were down 1.5 percent at 26.39 billion euros.
"The fourth quarter results reflect the serious consequences of the global financial and economic crisis and the measures taken by management accordingly," chief executive Gerard Kleisterlee said in a statement.
The announcement of the 7,000 job losses from ING was accompanied by a statement saying that its chief executive, Michel Tilmant, had resigned.
"ING announced today that in light of the extraordinary developments over the past few months and given his personal condition, Michel Tilmant will step down from the Executive Board," it said.
Tilmant is to be replaced by Jan Hommen, currently chairman of the supervisory board.
The Dutch government injected 10 billion euros (13.3 billion dollars) into ING in October to help it weather the economic crisis.
ING is one of the world's top 20 banks by market capitalisation, with 85 million clients and 130,000 employees.
French banking giant BNP Paribas was also caught up in the maelstrom, announcing a fourth quarter loss of 1.4 billion euros, its first time in the red for some 10 years. It expected a 2008 net profit of three billion euros, compared with a net profit of 7.8 billion euros the previous year.
The grim crop of news on the jobs front was compounded by a report saying that Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus was poised to cut over 3,500 jobs around the world, some 2,000 of them in Britain, due to a sharp fall in demand for steel.
The company, Europe's second-largest steelmaker now owned by the Tata's of India, has declined to comment on the report by the BBC, while British unions were due to meet Corus management during the day Monday.
Workers arriving for work were gloomy about their prospects. "People feel gutted. I have already had to take a 10 percent pay cut," said 45-year-old Douglas Mayhill, a worker at a Corus plant in Port Talbot, southern Wales.
"I was told on Friday I have a choice -- either accept a 10 percent pay cut or take redundancy -- that is no choice."
The fall in demand for steel was highlighted when Toyota Motor Corp. said it expected its global sales to fall by seven percent in the next business year to March 2010 due to the economic crisis.
The company anticipates sales of slightly more than seven million vehicles, against an expected 7.54 million in the current business year and 8.91 million the previous year, Japan's Nikkei business newspaper.
Toyota, seen as a symbol of Japanese manufacturing prowess, has not escaped the slump in demand that is battering the world car industry.
The US Congress is due to begin debate this week on new President Barack Obama's 825-billion-dollar stimulus bill designed to haul the US economy out of a paralyzing recession.
Before Obama heads to Capitol Hill to lobby for the bill in person, the Senate was expected to confirm his pick for Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner.
In his first presidential radio address at the weekend, Obama raised the spectre of double-digit unemployment, a massive erosion of family incomes and an entire generation losing its potential if Congress does not act on the stimulus bill.
"In short, if we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse," he said.
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Job seekers look through job listings in Oakland, California. Electronics giant Philips and banking group ING said they were slashing 13,000 jobs worldwide as the impact of what Barack Obama warned could be an "unprecedented" global crisis cut ever deeper.
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