Navistar to close Indianapolis foundry, cut 180 jobs

Navistar plans to close an Indianapolis foundry that makes engine blocks and heads, cutting about 180 jobs.

"We've determined that leveraging our suppliers for these components will reduce our engine costs, improve our overall manufacturing capacity utilization, and free up additional resources to invest in our core North America truck and parts business," Persio Lisboa, Lisle-based Navistar's president of operations, said in a statement today.

The move is expected to cut operating costs about $13 million a year, the company said. Navistar took an $11 million charge in the fourth quarter related to the move and expects to take another $40 million in charges in the first half of 2015.

The company said it would complete closing the foundry by next summer.

Citi cuts around 35 jobs on London trading floor

(Reuters) - U.S. bank Citi (C) has cut around 35 jobs across its capital markets trading operation in London, sources with knowledge of the changes said on Wednesday.

The cuts, announced internally last month, were across all asset classes, the sources told Reuters, and included head of G10 currency strategy Valentin Marinov.

High-earning jobs on trading floors have been squeezed by the growth in machine-driven trading and broader cuts at banks since the 2008 financial crisis, and lenders are also putting aside billions against the cost of litigation over charges they manipulated currency and interest rate markets.

Citigroup Inc said when it published third quarter results last month that it was pulling out of consumer banking in 11 markets, including Japan and Egypt, as it seeks to cut persistently high costs.

The third-largest U.S. bank, built with a series of acquisitions spanning back to the 1980s, has been trying to slim down since the financial crisis to be as profitable as rivals. It has shed hundreds of billions of dollars of bad assets.

Deere to lay off more than 600 at four U.S. plants

Aug 15 (Reuters) - Deere & Co, the world's largest maker of farm equipment, said it would indefinitely lay off more than 600 employees at plants in Illinois, Iowa and Kansas as falling grain prices hurt demand for tractors, harvesters and other agricultural machinery.

The company reported a 5 percent drop in third-quarter sales on Wednesday and cut its full-year profit forecast.

Deere had about 67,000 full-time employees as of Oct. 31, 2013, of which about 33,900 were in the United States and Canada.

The layoffs are at plants in Moline and East Moline, Illinois; Ankeny, Iowa; and Coffeyville, Kansas.

Deere, whose shares were little changed at $84.90 in early trading on Friday, said it would also implement seasonal and inventory-adjustment shutdowns at the affected plants that would result in temporary layoffs.

The company operated 26 plants in the United States and Canada as of Oct. 31, of which 17 primarily make agriculture and turf equipment. Deere also makes construction and forestry equipment.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has forecast record U.S. corn and soybean crops this year - a prospect that has sent prices plummeting and discouraged farmers from buying equipment.

Up to Thursday's close, Deere's stock had fallen 6 percent this year. It fell about 2 percent on Wednesday.

Tyson Foods to shut three factories, cut 950 jobs

(Reuters) - Tyson Foods Inc (TSN) said it will discontinue operations at three of its factories which make processed meat products such as sausages and hot dogs, affecting about 950 people.

The largest U.S. meat processor, which won the bidding war for Hillshire Brands Co (HSH) in June, said the closures were not related to the acquisition.

"The closings were under consideration long before our decision to pursue Hillshire Brands", Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson told Reuters.

Tyson outbid Pilgrim's Pride Corp (PPC) with its $63 per share offer for Hillshire, valuing the Jimmy Dean sausages maker at $8.55 billion.

The closures were due to changing product needs, an aging Cherokee, Iowa factory and the distance of the Buffalo, New York and Santa Teresa, New Mexico plants from their raw material supply base, the company said on Friday.

"The consolidation helps them get transportation efficiencies," Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist with Purdue University, said.

The number of beef cattle in the United States is at its lowest level in 63 years due to severe droughts, reducing the amount of meat available to process.

The Cherokee factory will close on Sep. 27, while the other two are expected to stop operating in the first half of 2015.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration had cited the Buffalo factory for workplace safety hazards last November and proposed fines of about $122,000.

Tyson contested the citations and settled the case in May, agreeing to pay $105,000 in fines.

The closures will affect 450 employees at Cherokee, 300 at Buffalo and 200 at Santa Teresa. The company had about 115,000 employees as of last September.

Shares of the company, which will report quarterly results on Monday, were little changed at $39.49 in extended trading on Friday.

Microsoft to cut up to 18000 jobs

Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it would cut up to 18,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of its workforce, as it halves the size of its recent Nokia acquisition and trims down other operations.

Microsoft confirmed it will cut up to 18,000 jobs over the next year, part of the tech titan's efforts to streamline its business under new CEO Satya Nadella.

In a statement released Thursday, Microsoft says about 12,500 of the professional and factory positions will be cut as part of its $7 billion acquisition of Nokia's handset business, which the company closed in April.

"My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible," said Nadella in a memo to employees.

Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer in February, says the "vast majority" of employees affected by layoffs will be notified within the next six months. They will also earn severance and job transition help in many locations. All cuts will be completed by next June.

The layoffs by Microsoft -- which employs 125,000 people -- are the company's largest since 2009, when they cut more than 5,000 jobs.

Daniel Ives, analyst with FBR Capital Markets, says the "larger than expected" layoffs hints at Nadella's plans to simplify Microsoft's infrastructure.

"Under the Ballmer era, there were many layers of management and a plethora of expensive initiatives being funded that has thus hurt the strategic and financial position the company is in, especially in light of digesting the Nokia acquisition," says Ives. "Nadella is using today as an opportunity to make sure that Microsoft is ready and well positioned to embark on its next chapter of growth around mobile and cloud."

Microsoft expects to incur pre-tax charges as high as $1.6 billion over the next four quarters, which will include $750 million to $800 million for severance and related benefit costs, and $350 million to $800 million of asset-related charges.

Chicago : Uber hiring 150 people

Uber is hitching a ride to Chicago's meatpacking district, where it plans to hire another 150 employees in its Midwest headquarters by late 2015.

San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc., which brought its taxi-hailing and ride-sharing smartphone appto Chicago in 2011, signed a three-year lease for the 12,000-square-foot building at 370 N. Carpenter St., where it plans to move by June, said Midwest General Manager Andrew Macdonald.

The property owner, Chicago-based developer Sterling Bay Cos., is in the process of gutting the interior of the building, a former Kingdom Farms Inc. meatpacking facility, Sterling Bay Managing Principal Andy Gloor confirmed.

“We looked at staying in River North, but we bought into the vision Sterling Bay has for the area,” Mr. Macdonald said.

Uber is already on its third Chicago office, moving in February to nearby 300 N. Elizabeth St., also owned by Sterling Bay, the most active developer in the area on the western edge of the West Loop, a hotbed of development. Previously, Uber was at 750 N. Orleans St., where it moved from shared office space at another River North loft building.

Sterling Bay's many nearby projects include converting the former Fulton Market Cold Storage building into the future Chicago office of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc. a block north of Uber's destination. Google's venture capital arm is an investor in Uber.

EMPLOYEE GROWTH
Uber expects to go from about 50 employees here now to 100 by the end of this year, with 200 Chicago employees by late 2015, which could cause the firm to outgrow a fourth Chicago office, according to Mr. Macdonald.

“We wanted a landlord we could grow with,” Mr. Macdonald said. “If we need to move again in a year or two, we feel there will be options.”

Uber was represented in the lease by First Vice President Paul Reaumond and Senior Vice President Brad Serot in the Chicago office of CBRE Inc.

Uber's Midwest office includes marketing, customer support and operations employees for Chicago, as well as teams serving Minneapolis, Detroit, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City and Milwaukee, Mr. Macdonald said. Dallas, Denver, Toronto, Montreal, Houston and Columbus, Ohio, all have workers based in their cities who Mr. Macdonald oversees, he said.

As privately held Uber moves into new markets, such as St. Louis, Kansas City, Louisville, Ky., Madison, Wis., and Tulsa, Okla., employees serving those cities also may be based in Chicago, Mr. Macdonald said.
Uber's temporary space on Elizabeth is part of a block-wide parcel Sterling Bay bought Jan. 31 for about $22 million, including a loan assumption, according to Cook County records and Mr. Gloor. Sterling Bay bought the property from a venture of Chicago-based Marc Realty LLC.

In addition to two existing office buildings, including the one where Uber is using short-term space, the property includes the partially built headquarters of now-defunct MarchFirst Inc. Sterling Bay plans to complete that building, 1380 W. Fulton Market, where construction halted in 2000 as consultancy MarchFirst spiraled into bankruptcy. The developer is in talks with large tenants to take all of its 300,000 square feet of the building, Mr. Gloor said.

Qantas chief Alan Joyce cuts 5000 jobs

Qantas will axe 5000 jobs, ditch unprofitable routes and retire ageing gas-guzzling planes, in the biggest shake up of its operations since it was floated.

Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services. It is the second oldest Airline in the World, and has been flying passengers since 1920.

Amazon to hire 2,500 across U.S.

• Hiring at five shipment centers
• Company has about 117,000 full- and part-time employees

SEATTLE — Amazon says it is hiring more than 2,500 full-time workers at its order fulfillment centers around the U.S.

Amazon.com Inc. plans to announce Wednesday that the jobs are available in Chester, Va., and Petersburg, Va.; Coffeyville, Kan.; Columbia, S.C.; Dupont, Wash.; Murfreesboro, Tenn.

The world's largest online retailer says last year it hired more than 20,000 people at its fulfillment centers, with more than half starting out as seasonal workers. Amazon says the median income for people working at its order-fulfillment facilities is higher than at traditional retailers.

The Seattle-based company had 117,300 full-time and part-time employees at the end of 2013, according to a regulatory filing.

Intel Plans to Cut 5,000 Jobs in 2014

Intel expects to shed about 5 percent of its work force, or 5,000 jobs, in 2014, as it tries to change the company with the times, according to a company official.

The official, who spoke only anonymously, said the cuts would probably be made through a mixture of attrition and layoffs.

Intel, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, rode to greatness by supplying crucial elements of personal computers, but it failed to anticipate the ways that smartphones and tablets would start to replace PCs.

Brian M. Krzanich, who became chief executive of Intel in mid-2013, has said that Intel has realized its mistake. He has been in a hurry to show how Intel’s newest chips could be part of wearable computers, biometric devices and even connected appliances.

Intel is also trying to make low-power chips that can compete in tablets and smartphones and to push new versions of chips for PCs. Those chips for PCs remain critical for Intel. In earnings announced on Thursday, the company said its PC division had $33 billion in revenue in 2013. While that number was down 4 percent from 2012, it was still nearly two-thirds of Intel’s annual revenue of $52.7 billion.

Intel also projected that its revenue for all of 2014 would be flat and that gross profit margins could shrink. Research and development spending was also expected to stabilize despite the pressure on profits, as Intel seeks new places to put its chips.

In a call with financial analysts on Thursday, Stacy J. Smith, Intel’s chief financial officer, said Intel would invest in chips for “things like the data center, tablets, low-power systems on a chip.” Those systems enable chips to perform several functions in a small space. He added, “There’s going be a significant shift in investment over the course of the year.”

The employment cuts, which the Intel official said were part of a larger program to shift resources to growing business lines, appeared to sit well with Wall Street.

Intel shares, which fell about 5 percent in early trading on Friday, recovered toward the end of the day as word of the job cuts began to circulate. The stock closed at $25.85 a share, down 2.6 percent, or 69 cents.