Thyssenkrupp cuts jobs further
FRANKFURT: Ailing conglomerate Thyssenkrupp said on Thursday it would need to cut a further 5,000 jobs to ease the impact of the coronavirus crisis on its businesses.
“We’re not yet where we need to be. The next steps could be more painful than the previous ones. But we will have to take them,” Chief Executive Martina Merz said in a statement.
This brings total job cuts to 11,000, a third of which have already been realised under a previous programme.
The conglomerate, whose steelmaking roots go back more than 200 years, is struggling to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic that hit it during a cool down of the global economy.
Thyssenkrupp said it expects its adjusted operating loss to narrow to a mid triple digit million euro range in the fiscal year to September, compared with 1.6 billion euros ($1.9 billion) in 2019/20.
A senior policymaker said last week that the company is considering carving out its steel division to seek state aid from Germany’s economic stabilisation fund in a bid to rescue the ailing business.
Andreas Pinkwart, economy minister of North Rhine-westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state and where Thyssenkrupp is based, said talks with the conglomerate over state aid were ongoing and that various options were being discussed.
“At the moment we’re seeing that the company and also the labour representatives are leaning towards carving out steel and putting it under the WSF (economic stabilisation fund),” Pinkwart said in a state parliament session.
He said the scenario was being examined by Germany’s Finance Minister Olaf Scholz and Economy Minister Peter Altmaier.