Sony Executives Give Up Bonuses After Loss at Electronics Unit

Sony Corp. (6758) executives will give up their bonuses after its main electronics business was unprofitable for a second straight year.

The board backed a proposal from Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai that management forgo bonuses worth 30 percent to 50 percent of their annual pay in the year ended March, Mami Imada, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman said by phone today. She declined to specify the amount of compensation being reduced.

Hirai pledged to revive Sony’s electronics operation by cutting 10,000 jobs and shifting away from the unprofitable television unit after he took the top job in April last year. The CEO is expanding an initiative from last year when the 52- year-old and his predecessor Howard Stringer didn’t get bonuses.

About 40 executives are returning the bonuses which were scheduled to be paid after the general shareholders meeting in June, according to Yu Kikuchi, a Sony spokeswoman.

Sony reported its first annual net profit in five years last week, helped by one-time gains from asset sales and a weaker yen. The company didn’t say how much the electronics unit lost.

Net income was probably 40 billion yen ($410 million) in the year ended March 31, compared with a net loss of 456.7 billion yen a year earlier, the company said in a preliminary earnings statement April 26. That was in line with the 43.3 billion yen average of 18 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Selling properties and stock holdings generated about $2 billion in profit for Sony as it stumbles from losses in its TV business and mobile-phone unit. Games, cameras and mobile devices, including Xperia smartphones, are central to Hirai’s plan to revive the consumer-electronics business after losing ground to Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

The Nikkei reported the plan to give up bonuses earlier today.

To contact the reporters on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net; Grace Huang in Tokyo at xhuang66@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-01/sony-executives-give-up-bonuses-after-loss-at-electronics-unit.html

--------------------

Glad to see Kaz being smart with money/Sony. If you don't do well enough to even turn a profit, your damn higher-ups don't get freak'n bonuses(period)

Still quite a ways to go then.

We all need to do our part to help Sony. I for one am using gel deodorant instead of spray so that I don't make things worse with global warming which at the same time affects us all and thus affects Sony. I am doing my part Sony, fight on.

Sony is in such disastrous shape as a company, it's hard to imagine how they'll pull off a successful ps4 launch. They're in much worse position than during the ps3 launch period. They can't afford to sell ps4 at a loss, but also can't set the price too high. How can this possibly work out for them with 8gb ram, and fairly good specs, looks like the console will be far too expensive for a mass market. Something has got to give here. For all the people screaming how Nintendo will fail, why doesn't anyone think Sony will fail? That is much much more likely.

No, no, it'll be fine. Sony can use all the huge profits they've earned on PS3 and PS Vita to subsidize the PS4.

Actually, it would be pretty ironic if Sony's game division is destroyed by the subsidy model they themselves  introduced to the console market.

hmmm.. i got god of war ascension yesterday at a really cheap price of 23 euros.. so they probably didn't earn much from me on that.. I'm sorry Sony...

Good, if your company isn't doing well then you don't deserve bonuses. Also 40-50% bonuses based on annual salary? No wonder these companies are in trouble. Executives bleeding companies dry with ridiculous compensation packages that they don't deserve.

"Net income was probably 40 billion yen ($410 million) in the year ended March 31, compared with a net loss of 456.7 billion yen a year earlier"
"Selling properties and stock holdings generated about $2 billion in profit for Sony as it stumbles from losses in its TV business and mobile-phone unit"

soooo... "456.7 billion Japanese yen = 4.6496627 billion U.S. dollars" thanks google.

they are still in the red cause they had to sell stuff to reach a profit result, still bleeding money. Not as much as before though, which is positive. Hope they can turn the ship around

This should have been done a long time ago and across all the unprofitable divisions.