Siemens CFO says next year to be even tougher
Reuters, Aug 23 2002
FRANKFURT, Aug 23 (Reuters) - The chief financial officer of German industrial group Siemens <SIEGn.DE> was quoted on Friday as saying its business environment would get even tougher in the next business year, while a board member warned of job cuts.
Siemens has already announced 17,800 job cuts at its troubled telecoms fixed line equipment maker ICN, which has been hurt by telecoms operating companies slashing their capital expenditure budgets.
"The next business year will be even tougher than the current one," chief financial officer Heinz-Joachim Neubuerger told the Siemens in-house magazine, quoted in Friday's Handelsblatt and Financial Times Deutschland.
It was not in the company's interests to "lose money on businesses that have for too long failed to yield any return worth talking about," he said.
Andy Mattes, the board member responsible for ICN's factories, was also quoted as saying: "In the future we will have significantly fewer factories and we will employ fewer people."
And, according to Handelsblatt, chief executive Heinrich von Pierer said: "We must come to terms (with the fact) that there will not very soon be a fundamental improvement."
The comments come just days after Siemens announced the latest 1,300 job cuts at the loss-making telecoms network division.
In total, the company has announced more than 32,000 job cuts since last year, about seven percent of its workforce at the end of its last business year in September 2001.
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