* Headquarters workforce to be cut by around half-Nikkei
* R&D;, production tech functions could be spun off-Nikkei
* Shares gain 3.3 pct, bucking Tokyo market fall
TOKYO, May 29 (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp, which
posted a record net loss in the business year just ended, is
mulling fresh job losses on top of 17,000 recent lay-offs as the
Japanese electronics conglomerate looks to engineer a profit
rebound, a source said.
Following restructuring at its plants and other facilities,
next in line is the company’s headquarters, the source with
knowledge of the deliberations said. Rather than redundancies,
however, staff may be shifted to other units, subsidiaries or
affiliates, the source added.
The maker of Viera TVs and Lumix cameras, which incurred a
772 billion yen ($9.7 billion) group net loss for the year ended
March 31, may more than halve its 7,000 head office workers, the
Nikkei business daily reported Tuesday, without saying where it
obtained the information.
A Panasonic spokeswoman said no job cuts had been decided,
adding that the company was, nonetheless, always looking for
ways to restructure its business.
The consumer electronics maker’s most recent round of staff
cuts taps into an emerging trend of redundancies at yen-hobbled
Japanese manufacturers, particularly technology giants such as
Sony Corp that are struggling to compete against
foreign rivals, such as Korea’s Samsung Electronics.
Sony’s new chief Kazuo Hirai last month outlined plans to
cut 10,000 jobs, or 6 percent of the global workforce at the
firm, as losses mount in its TV division.
Yet, borne of a stakeholder business culture where firing
workers is frowned upon, Japanese firms still eschew mass
lay-offs. That hesitancy leaves them worker heavy and,
therefore, less productive.
Panasonic, with annual sales of about $99 billion, employs
some 350,000 people worldwide. Sony has half that number on its
payroll. Panasonic’s payroll total is around three times that of
Samsung Electronics and 60,000 more than General Electric
, where annual sales are $30 billion higher.
Incoming president Kazuhiro Tsuga, due to take his post next
month, has said one of his main missions would be to speed up
decision-making. He has pledged to get Panasonic’s ailing TV
business back on a firm footing within two years.
Sources told Reuters earlier this month that Sony and
Panasonic were in talks to jointly develop the technology to
mass produce next-generation OLED televisions, widely seen
replacing current LCD TVs.
Panasonic, which aims to achieve a 50 billion yen group net
profit in the year ending March 2013, would start discussing the
latest job cuts with workers in July and likely start offering
early retirement soon after, the Nikkei said.
The company was also considering spinning off R&D; and
production technology functions, the paper said. Procurement
division personnel could be transferred to closely affiliated
segments.
Panasonic’s shares gained as much as 3.3 percent in early
trading in Tokyo and ended the morning session up 1.2 percent at
522 yen compared with a 0.3 percent fall in the broader Topix
index.
