Companies in the news ...and how they were assessed

Ford: jobs inferno

“Here in Europe, we’ve got a pretty difficult economic situation and the outlook is uncertain,” said Ford’s UK boss, Tim Slatter, as he slashed 1,300 jobs (one in five of its UK workforce) this week. The move, said BBC Business, is part of “a major restructuring programme” that will see the US carmaker cut 3,800 jobs across Europe as it “prepares for the transition to electric vehicles”, lured in part by lavish US green manufacturing subsidies. It also marks a retreat from the UK, coming just over two years after Ford closed its engine plant in Bridgend. This time, the cuts will mostly be felt by “development staff” at its Dunton research site in Essex. Slatter’s explanation is “feeble”, said Ross Clark on Spectator.co.uk. He claims electric cars are “simpler” than petrol and diesel versions, so will need less product development. Really? Electric cars are a “relatively novel” mass-market product; their range is still too short, they take too long to recharge, their batteries are too heavy, and they’re too pricey. In short, there are still heaps of problems to be overcome. The more likely reason for these cutbacks is that “Ford has been struggling” financially. Mastering “the challenge of designing an affordable electric car” is the holy grail of carmakers. Ford won’t achieve it by downsizing.

Credit Suisse: share plunge

The woes of the world’s most shambolic bank show no sign of ending, said Ben Martin in The Times. Shares in Switzerland’s second-largest lender plunged by nearly 15%, after Credit Suisse recorded its “heaviest financial loss” since the 2008 crisis and “warned investors of further pain to come”. Clearly, the restructuring promised by new CEO Ulrich Körner, who is trying to revive the bank following “a series of scandals”, has some way to go. Fears about Credit Suisse’s financial health reached a climax in October on speculation that it “could be on the brink of collapse”. The world’s super-rich pulled out an “astounding £100bn of funds” in the last quarter of 2022 as confidence faded – kneecapping Körner’s plan “to ditch casino banking and make a comeback as a wealth manager”, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. There’s no shortage of safer anchorages – such as Goldman Sachs, which is making a big push into European wealth management. After Credit Suisse’s adventures, safety “may be more valuable to Europe’s financial elites than the tax advantages which once gave the gnomes of Zürich an edge”.

Trafigura: nickel nightmare

In another setback for Swiss finance, the country’s leading metals trader, Trafigura, is facing a $577m hit from an apparent nickel fraud, said Joe Wallace in The Wall Street Journal. The allegedly “systematic” scam – which Trafigura claims was perpetrated by companies controlled by the Indian metals trader Prateek Gupta – came to light when “containers were found on arrival not to contain nickel”. It’s “a black eye” for Trafigura, which has expanded aggressively over the past decade and has “raced to tap the growing demand for nickel” (vital to making EV batteries). The biggest surprise for insiders, said The Straits Times (Singapore), is that a giant such as Trafigura “was still doing business” with Gupta, with his “chequered history”. What happened to controls? The worry for the wider metals market, said Bloomberg, is that Trafigura has already sold nearly $100m of the “nickel” cargoes on to other companies. This will take some unravelling.