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Chartered to Go Belly Up Soon?

makapaaa

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Asset
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Jan 31, 2009
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Chartered to cut 500 jobs <!--10 min-->
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>A last-resort measure after drastic fall in plant utilisation, says company </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Chua Hian Hou
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>




<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"-->GIANT chipmaker Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing - already bracing itself for one of its biggest-ever quarterly losses - is laying off 500 employees here.
The layoffs will affect all levels, 'from manufacturing to managerial to executive', said chief executive Chia Song Hwee yesterday.
Affected staff will be told by next week.
Those who have been with the company for three or more years will get one month's pay for every year of service, while those with less time there will get two weeks' pay for every year at Chartered.
The company, which has six plants here, will also give an ex-gratia payment to retrenched employees and has engaged consultants to help them find new jobs. Mr Chia did not rule out further layoffs.
The retrenchments will cost Chartered US$8 million (S$12 million) but will help it save US$16 million over the year.
This round of layoffs brings the total job cuts at Chartered to 1,300 since last August, or 18 per cent of its previous workforce of about 7,200.
An engineer at Chartered's Woodlands plant, who did not want to be named, was not surprised when told the news.
'Business has been very bad. Everybody knew it was only a matter of time,' he said. 'My only worry is that with the whole semiconductor industry in trouble, I doubt I'll be able to find a similar job.'
Since August, Chartered has cut about 270 contract positions, let go of poor performers, implemented pay cuts and frozen hiring. It also did not replace those who resigned, said Mr Chia.
He told The Straits Times that yesterday's step was a last resort as utilisation of its plants had fallen to 59 per cent for the quarter ended Dec 31. It is expected to slide further to just 37 per cent in this quarter, which is shaping up to be the firm's worst.
It has forecast that it will suffer a quarterly loss of US$147 million for the first three months of this year.
The Government announced in last week's Budget that it will subsidise part of a worker's wage bill through the Jobs Credit scheme, but that was not enough to avoid the job cuts, Mr Chia said.
'Unfortunately business conditions continue to deteriorate, and with utilisation below 40 per cent, despite the Jobs Credit scheme, resizing is unavoidable,' he said.
Yesterday, the United Workers of Electronic and Electrical Industries said that Chartered had informed it early last month of the layoffs, giving the union enough time to plan how to help affected staff. It added that it will work with the company to send more workers for training.
Chartered, the world's third-largest maker of customised chips, announced the dismal profits outlook and job cuts yesterday morning before the markets opened.
It also filed its financial results for its fourth quarter ending Dec 31.
It posted a net loss of US$92.6 million for the full year on revenues of US$1.66 billion. It had a US$101.7 million profit in 2007.
The financial turmoil had caused an 'unprecedented rate of decline in semiconductor demand worldwide', said chief financial officer George Thomas in a statement.
Two weeks ago, the labour movement estimated that 2,000 workers in the electronics manufacturing sector would lose their jobs by March. In comparison, 2,374 electronics sector jobs were lost last year. [email protected]
 

singveld

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Asset
ho ching is rich,
so i guess chartered will go on

if chartered go
the rest of the semiconductor probably will go next
 

iamelite

Alfrescian
Loyal
Sigh.. What can I say except she's got the touch.
It's not everyday that you can point at 10 things and get it all wrong. haha
 

SneeringTree

Alfrescian
Loyal
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Jan 31, 2009
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>Chartered to cut 500 jobs <!--10 min-->
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>A last-resort measure after drastic fall in plant utilisation, says company </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Chua Hian Hou
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"-->
The Government announced in last week's Budget that it will subsidise part of a worker's wage bill through the Jobs Credit scheme, but that was not enough to avoid the job cuts, Mr Chia said.
'Unfortunately business conditions continue to deteriorate, and with utilisation below 40 per cent, despite the Jobs Credit scheme, resizing is unavoidable,' he said.

[email protected]

WHAT?!?! You mean the genius budget initiative of our million dollar ministers cannot save jobs???? You mean Jobs Credit Scheme did not work???
 
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Jiatlark

Alfrescian
Loyal
looks like nobody care about the resilience package anymore...bosses sack and retrench when they don't see the profits...despite gahment's appeals NOT to retrench....more unemployed singaporeans on the card!!! come feb many will sob...
 

Jiatlark

Alfrescian
Loyal
Why An Asshole is Always in Charge
January 25, 2009

by Greg Palast

John Thain is the guy that looks like a Clark Kent doll you saw grinning from page one of your paper Friday morning. Thain was just fired by Bank of America because the square-jawed executive demanded a $30 million bonus after losing $5 billion in just three months at the bank's Merrill Lynch unit. In addition, Thain spent over a million dollars redecorating his office - including installation of a $35,000 toilet bowl - while the U.S. Treasury was bailing out his company.

There is no justice. Thain shouldn't have been fired; he should have gotten a $60 million bonus -- and Obama should immediately hire him as Secretary of the Treasury in place of that tax-dodging lightweight that's been nominated, Timothy Geithner.

Here's the facts, ma'am.

Thain was CEO of Merrill Lynch, the big brokerage firm. On a good day, Merrill is worth zero. A week before it was about to go out of business, Thain sold this busted bag of financial feces to Bank of America for $50 BILLION.

I'd say that's worth a bonus.

But it gets better. When the bag broke and another $5 billion in losses were discovered at Merrill, Thain went to the U.S. Treasury and got ANOTHER $20 BILLION to cover Bank of America's bad financial bet -- from us, the taxpayers.

Now that certainly deserves a bonus. And let's face it, a butthole that big needs a $35,000 toilet. Instead, the guy that paid the $50 billion, Bank of America Chairman Kenneth Lewis, is keeping his job. Lewis is the same guy that just spent billions more on buying Countrywide Financial, the sub-prime mortgage loan sharks that have brought America to its knees and put Bank of America into effective bankruptcy. (Note to Mr. Lewis: the only thing worse than getting cancer is PAYING for it.)

But dumber than Lewis is the loser who OK'd paying Bank of America for its losses on Merrill, who traded a pile of turds for a stack of gold -- our gold from the U.S. Treasury. That was Tim Geithner, Obama's pick for Treasury Secretary, who's now answering questions at Senate confirmation hearings about his funky tax filings. Tiny Tim was head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank during the Bush regime. Along with Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, Geithner came up with that $700 billion bail-out that loaded banks with loot on their way to insolvency. Bank of America got $25 billion of it to spend on Thain's company Merrill. That was before the extra $20 billion was weedled by Thain.

So why, President Obama, have you given us Tiny Tim to save our sorry nation's economic behind? What's with that?

In another life I was an economist. Really. So here's the economic facts of life: Our valiant young president is going to have to borrow a trillion dollars to bring our economy back from the grave. He's got to borrow it, no choice about that. But who in their right minds will lend it to us? I can tell you the number one job of a new Treasury Secretary will be to con Saudi sheiks and Chinese apparatchiks into lending us another trillion (they've already lent $2 trillion).

Who in the world can talk them into it?

The answer came to me after I went this afternoon to see my proctologist, a brilliant doctor with one eye and really long fingers. (OK, I made that up.) The good doctor told me that hoary old joke about the heart and brain and rectum getting into a fight about which one was more important. When the higher organs made fun of the butt-end, the rectum went on strike. After a month, the brain and heart couldn't take it any more -- the whole body was about to explode. So they told the rectum, 'You win.' And the rectum said, 'Now you know why an asshole's always in charge.'

There's our answer. Instead of an easily duped, incompetent weasel like Geithner for Secretary of the Treasury, what we really need is a lying bucket of evil snot, a flaming red take-no-prisoners asshole. A guy like Thain that can sell a piece of crap like Merrill for billions -- twice -- is just what we need to shake down the sheiks. "America for Sale! Cheap!"

And Thain comes with his own gold-plated toilet.

Greg Palast is an investigative journalist and author of New York Times bestsellers "Armed Madhouse" and "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". He has been called "The most important investigative reporter of our time" by Tribune Magazine. Palast won the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Award for his BBC documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes." He has also received numerous other awards for his journalism. Support his investigations by getting an autographed copy of "Armed Madhouse" at www.PalastInvestigativeFund.org. Subscribe to Palast's reports at www.GregPalast.com.
 
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