Actually there is more chance of a "Oh here we go again with the Sony hate" comment than a bankrupcy comment.

Is this 2000 part of the 16000 announced a while back or is it an extra 2000?

They said those layoffs would save them $1 billion a year, and Nikkei mentioned $2-$3 billion losses in the last two quarters, so obviously they're not enough (not in the context of sustainability at least).

On another important note, most of those measures are to save cash in the medium/long-term... I'm still wondering how they'll have enough cash in the short/medium term. The restructuring costs money too, on top of the operating losses.

@seece

we can only hope the 2000 is included in the 16,000 figure

the economy's bad.....less people with jobs will make it only worse!

Another big problem is their inventory. I read a report they had around $11 billion of inventory accumulated, which isn't worth that much any more. So at some point they are going to have to take the hit for it and discount the inventory.

Perhaps you can answer this... Is it standard procedure to do a write-down of the inventory's value due to recent currency movements?

I don't know enough about it to be honest. Electronics depreciate pretty quickly, so currency isn't the only factor. There are tax and financing implications as well.

I agree but with the way things are going its just one big snowball effect and the more people out of jobs the less people buying PS3's and Bravia TV's ... meaning more job cuts for Sony ... it really IS a snowball effect for Sony.

If this is what a company as big as SONY has to do then so be it. At lease they are doing something about.

It's a snowball effect for almost everyone... made worse by the many dependencies of the globalized economy.

Basically...yes. When the book value of the inventory no longer matches the market value of the inventory, companies can writeoff. Of course there is criteria that must be met but yes, companies will write-down inventory because they can lower their taxes that way.