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Markets Down amid Layoff Announcements
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by jordan | November 20, 2008 at 06:53 am
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Following yesterday's Dow Jones plunge, markets around the world have been reeling. The manufacturing outlook is dire, and even more layoffs were announced in the manufactuting sector. (see below).
London's FTSE 100 index was down 1.7% around midday, with mining shares hardest hit. French and German markets also lost ground.
In Asia, Japan's Nikkei index ended 6.8% lower and Hong Kong's main index fell more than 4%.
The slide comes after the Dow Jones share index in New York fell to its lowest level in five years.
British engine maker Rolls-Royce will shed between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs worldwide next year and is already in talks to cut 140 posts in Britain where there has been a string of job losses in recent weeks.
It predicts sales volumes will fall by at least 10% in 2009, following a 17% drop in the last quarter of this year.
In the pharmaceutical industry, Canadian firm AstraZeneca is cutting1,400 jobs and closing plants in Spain, Sweden and Belgium, and expanding its packaging plant in China.
AstraZeneca said the cuts and closing of plants in Spain, Belgium and Sweden by 2013 are in addition to the 7,600 positions being eliminated by 2010 in a previously announced cost-savings plan.
The drugmaker won a temporary restraining order preventing Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. from selling a copy of the Pulmicort Respules asthma treatment until a patent hearing scheduled for Nov. 25. The threat of the generic version led London-based AstraZeneca to say yesterday that full-year earnings would be near the bottom of the company's forecast.
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