Japan's Ricoh to cut 10,000 jobs over three years

Japanese office equipment and digital camera maker Ricoh said Thursday it plans to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide over three years to turn around sagging business operations. Ricoh was hit hard by the 2008-09 global financial crisis and the strong yen and has struggled to recover in the face of stiff competition. The cuts from a global workforce of over 100,000, Ricoh's first major wave of job losses, will be made both at home and abroad by March 2014. The company currently employs 40,000 people in Japan and 68,900 overseas. Ricoh did not go into specifics on the planned job cuts but said it would shift 15,000 workers to areas with more growth potential, such as services for corporate clients. The company also plans to revamp or withdraw from operations where it is making losses. Ricoh said its market was still growing in emerging nations, but added that "purchases of printing devices and paper-printing volume are expected to decline in developed countries". It attributed the rise of a "paperless trend" to the emergence of smartphones and tablet computers. Ricoh saw its group net profit drop sharply in recent years -- from more than 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion) in the year to March 2008 to 6.5 billion yen a year later. Net profit for the last business year stood at 19.6 billion yen, down 29.5 percent from the previous year. Sales came to 1.94 trillion yen, missing a target of 2.3 trillion yen. Ricoh said in its mid-term business plan announced Thursday it aims to achieve group sales of 2.4 trillion yen in fiscal 2013, which ends in March 2014, by expanding market share in emerging countries. It also aims at an operating profit of 210 billion yen, more than three times higher than 60.1 billion yen in the last year. The company plans to maintain capital spending at the current level, which would be 200 billion yen over the three years. Ricoh's stock surged 7.2 percent in Tokyo to 911 yen on the news. "Ricoh has a strong global presence, so their labour contracts are more lax than (those of) traditional Japanese firms, and it's therefore easier for them to cut staff as a way to trim costs," Tatsunori Kawai, chief strategist at kabu.com, told Dow Jones Newswires. He said that a 10 percent cut "is huge for Ricoh and very bold".