Scandal-plagued Japanese manufacturer Toshiba Corp. is cutting 6,800
jobs after projecting a net loss of 550 billion yen ($4.5 billion) for
the fiscal year through March 2016.
Toshiba
said Monday it will slash the jobs in its personal computer, video
product and consumer electronic businesses. The job cuts equal about 3
percent of Toshiba's overall employees. It is also selling its TV plant
in Indonesia.
Toshiba,
which also makes nuclear power plants, has repeatedly apologized after
acknowledging it had systematically doctored its books over several
years to inflate profits by 152 billion yen ($1.3 billion).
Officials
have said that mangers set unrealistic earnings targets, under the
banner of creating a big "challenge," and subordinates faked results.
The
scandal at one of the nation's top brands highlights how Japan is still
struggling to improve corporate governance, despite efforts to beef up
independent oversight of companies.
Toshiba
said the job cuts in Japan will be by early retirement, but a
significant number of overseas jobs will also be involved and steps will
vary by each nation. It did not immediately have a detailed regional
breakdown.
Earlier this year, Toshiba said it is selling facilities for making computer chips related to image sensors to Sony Corp.
Toshiba
is also in trouble because it operates and is decommissioning, with
Hitachi and other companies, the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant,
which went into meltdowns after the March 2011 tsunami.
Toshiba said it had not yet fully calculated the impact of the nuclear disaster on its books.
The
latest earnings projection means Toshiba is sinking into its second
straight year of red ink, after racking up a nearly 38 billion yen ($312
million) loss for the fiscal year that ended in March.
Japanese
media reports said the loss forecast for this fiscal year would be a
record for Toshiba, surpassing the massive losses during the Lehman
financial crisis.
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