Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss industrial group Oerlikon AG announced a drop in sales in the first half of 2009 of 40 percent to CHF1.4 billion, and negative earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of -CHF164 million. The company announced 25 August that its CEO, Uwe Krueger, is stepping down effective immediately and said board member Hans Ziegler will take over until a new CEO can be named.
The company cut 1,500 jobs in the first half of 2009, reduced hours for 2,300 workers, and announced restructuring costs of CHF130m for all of 2009. Oerlikon announced 25 August that it will cut an additional 2,500 jobs.
Related: TSR (Fre)
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 25 August 2009.
Filed under: Business
Tags: CEO, EBIT, Hans Ziegler, job cuts, job losses, Oerlikon, orders, reduced working hours, Uwe Krueger
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August 30th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Recently I’ve read a comment (here it is — http://blogs.ft.com/martin-wolf-exchange/2010/08/08/what-is-the-role-of-the-state/#comment-1061867) in Financial Times concerning the purchase of large share of Oerlikon and Sulzer assets by Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg. Swiss authorities have imposed a huge fine for some minor violations seemingly to ban him from investing to Swiss industrial sector. That’s what we call “Fair play”. Have there been any major changes in that case?
August 30th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
A bit of background: the fine, CHF40 million, was issued in December 2009 and announced by Vekselberg’s company, Renova, in January 2010. The fines are for irregularities in buying Oerlikon shares in 2006, according to the Swiss government. The second case is the purchase by Oerlikon of Sulzer shares. Ria Novosti, Russian news agency, reported in early February 2010 that Renova would appeal the decision: the fine was about 20% of Renova’s investment in Oerlikon at the time and the largest previous fine for a similar offense was CHF50,000. Oerlikon reported 17 August that it expects to return to profit next year, 2011, after its shares had lost about half their value in the past year, with orders down sharply during the financial crisis. More on the company’s and Vekselberg’s finances from Reuters, in March 2010. And according to Bloomberg in June, Swiss-Russian business via Vekselberg isn’t slowing down at all. As for the fine and the billionaire’s appeal, no news yet.