IN BRIEF (Page 16)

Job cuts

Ford Motor Co is set to announce up to 13,000 new job cuts after agreeing with the United Auto Workers union on terms of the redundancies, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

The report, quoting people familiar with the matter, said the cuts may affect as many as 11,000 hourly jobs and as many as 2,000 salaried positions. That would be on top of some 44,000 jobs Ford has already shed since early 2006, it said. Ford officials were not immediately available for comment.

Forecast boosted

Pernod Ricard SA, the world's second-largest liquor company, raised its annual profit forecast after stronger Asian and Latin American demand for imported spirits helped second-quarter sales to beat analysts' estimates.

Operating profit will advance 12 percent, more than its prior forecast of 10 percent, the Paris-based company said yesterday in a statement.

IPO postponed

Tommy Hilfiger Corp, the fashion brand owned by Apax Partners Worldwide LLP, delayed plans for an initial public offering after stock markets tumbled.

"Management and shareholders decided to postpone an IPO process until such time that market conditions have stabilized," the Amsterdam-based clothing company said in an e-mailed statement.

Gloomier outlook

Japanese manufacturers' business sentiment dipped to a two-year low in January due to rising raw materials prices, slack consumer spending and fallout from the credit crisis, a Reuters survey showed yesterday.

The Reuters Tankan, a monthly survey of leading Japanese firms designed to track the Bank of Japan's quarterly tankan survey, produced an index of plus 17 for manufacturers in January, down from plus 21 in December.

Unsolicited offer

Apartment owner Post Properties Inc on Wednesday said former CEO John Williams teamed up with a Canadian pension fund in an unsolicited bid of about $2 billion for the company, sending its shares up 16 percent.

The offer from Williams Realty Advisors LLC and Cadim, part of pension fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, of $44 to $47 a share translates into $1.97 billion to $2.1 billion, plus the assumption of debt.

Equity One sale

Popular Inc, the parent of Banco Popular, agreed to sell much of its US consumer finance business Equity One to a unit of American International Group Inc for about $1.5 billion, the companies said on Wednesday.

The sale to American General Finance Inc includes about $1.47 billion of Equity One's mortgage and consumer loan portfolio, Popular spokesman Enrique Martel said.

Stryker jumps

Stryker Corp, which said this week it was recalling some artificial hip products, reported on Wednesday a 21 percent jump in fourth-quarter profit on double-digit growth in sales of orthopedic implants and medical and surgical equipment.

The orthopedic device maker posted a net profit of $276.1 million, or 66 cents per share, compared with a profit of $227.9 million, or 55 cents per share, a year earlier.

Profit doubles

Japan's Nintendo Co Ltd said its operating profit more than doubled in April-December, driven by robust holiday sales of its Wii and DS game machines, and the company raised its outlook just above market expectations.

Operating profit at Nintendo, whose Wii console beat Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Corp's Xbox 360 in 2007 sales both in the United States and Japan, was 394.04 billion yen ($3.7 billion), up from 167.63 billion yen a year earlier.

Agencies

(China Daily 01/25/2008 page16)