Panasonic Corp. expects to make a net loss of £2.9 billion in this financial year to March end and has decided to cut 15,000 jobs and shut 27 plants around the world.
The Japanese air conditioning giant says as much as 50% of the 15,000 job cuts will be made outside Japan by March 2010.

On February 4, Panasonic published its consolidated financial results for the third quarter of the current fiscal year.

In its statement the group said: 'The company's business conditions have worsened particularly since last October, due mainly to the rapid appreciation of the yen, sluggish consumer spending worldwide and ever-intensified price competition.'

This week Mitsubishi Electric Corp. also announced its third quarter results. For the period October 2008-December 2008 the firm's operating profit fell by 45% to 35.1 billion yen (when compared with the previous year). Mitsubishi Electric has revised its consolidated earnings forecast for March end from £930m (120 billion yen) to £76.9m (10 billion yen).