Motorola Inc unveiled a series of cost-saving moves on Wednesday, including cutting the base pay of its top two executives and freezing pension contributions.
The troubled US mobile phone manufacturer said co-chief executives Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha had both agreed to a 25 percent decrease in base salary next year.
Brown will also forgo this year’s cash bonus, the Schaumburg, Illinois, company said in a statement, while Jha, who took over Motorola’s mobile devices unit in August, will take a reduced cash bonus as restricted stock.
Motorola, without providing any details, also said: “Employees in many of the markets in which it operates will not receive a salary increase in 2009.”
PENSION CUTS
The company also announced new regulations governing its pension contributions.
Motorola said that as of March 1 it would “permanently freeze its US pension plans, preserving vested benefits accrued by employees and retirees but eliminating future benefit accruals.”
It said that as of Jan. 1, it would temporarily suspend making matching contributions to the 401(k) retirement plans of employees.
“The sustained downturn in the global economy requires that we take these difficult but necessary steps,” Brown and Jha said in a statement. “While serving our customers remains a top priority, we are equally focused on our cost structure, and we will continue to implement appropriate measures to conserve cash and reduce expenses.”
The moves are the latest cost-cutting measures at Motorola, which announced on Oct. 30 that it was cutting its global workforce by 4.5 percent, or some 3,000 employees, and delaying the spinoff of its troubled cellphone unit.
The ailing company had 66,000 employees worldwide at the end of last year and the October job cuts took the total number of layoffs since January last year to 13,000.
LOSSES
Motorola reported a net loss of US$397 million in the third quarter of the year after reporting a net profit of US$60 million for the same period last year.
Motorola enjoyed success with its popular Razr phone launched in 2005 but has been losing ground since to Apple and Research in Motion as well as other major cellphone makers such as Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
COMBAT READINESS: The military is reviewing weaponry, personnel resources, and mobilization and recovery forces to adjust defense strategies, the defense minister said The military has released a photograph of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) appearing to sit beside a US general during the annual Han Kuang military exercises on Friday last week in a historic first. In the photo, Koo, who was presiding over the drills with high-level officers, appears to be sitting next to US Marine Corps Major General Jay Bargeron, the director of strategic planning and policy of the US Indo-Pacific Command, although only Bargeron’s name tag is visible in the seat as “J5 Maj General.” It is the first time the military has released a photo of an active
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
RSS