Power companies cut back as the UK freezes.

February 4th, 2009 by admin | Filed under Daily News, Employment, Recession.

E.ON UK one of the UK’s leading integrated power and gas companies to cut 450 jobs in retail business throughout the country, including E.ON’s main offices in Nottinghamshire and at its Coventry HQ

The company said that it will make effort to achieve the reduction by voluntary redundancies wherever possible.

As part of an ongoing program that could lead to further job reductions as people who leave the company over the coming months are not replaced.

As part of the overall planned reduction, the company has also announced its intention to cease operations at its call center near Glasgow, which employs 40 people.

On the FTSE, mining giant BHP Billiton has seen its half-year profits fall by a quarter, saying it had been hit by “a rapid deterioration in market conditions”.

The Anglo-Australian firm made a pre-tax profit of US$6.9bn (£4.8bn) in the six months to 31 December, down 25% from $9.1bn a year earlier.

BHP said it was also affected by one-off costs, including the abandonment of its bid interest in rival Rio Tinto.

Global metal demand and prices have slumped as the economy has worsened.

BHP’s half-year revenues were down seventeen percent from the year before. although the company were did hasten to announce that the results “represented a robust operating and financial performance achieved in an environment that deteriorated significantly during the period”.

BHP announced last month that it plans to cut about 6,000 jobs worldwide to cope with falling demand for its products.

US based specialist provider of healthcare information systems, Mediware reported an increase of revenue of sixteen percent for the second half of 2008, largely attributed to continued strong sales from the company’s UK-based medication management business, new sales in Blood Center Technologies, and the benefit of aggressive cost management programs.

Trade was slow on Tuesday, as many stayed at home and out of the snow.

There was some good news for British Airways’ the UK flagship airline, despite the weather forcing them to cancel all of their flights from Heathrow, The news that their merger with Iberia was close with the only issue being that the share split would now be 55-45 in favour of BA with Caja Madrid, the biggest shareholder in Iberia rather than the previously expected 60-40. At the end of the day, t BA’s shares had melted 4 per cent to 116.1p at the end of

Barclays Bank shares slipped r after Moody’s Investor Service cut its long-term rating with the credit rating agency expecting further problems with credit-related write-downs and impairments… Barclays ended 10.56 per cent down to close at 94.9p. With Royal Bank of Scotland the next worst, losing 7.27 per cent to 20.40p.

A rising star was the software company Autonomy designers and producers of a technology that tracks so-called “unstructured” data, including emails, Word documents, instant messaging and voicemails. . The stock rose by two per cent to 1116p after announcing its most advanced e- discovery programme for audio recordings.

Another climber was the data centre group Telecity Group who rose a respectable 12.35 per cent to 191p after a strong set of results, showing more than a 100% rise in earnings in 2008 “.

On the growth market, Vane Minerals was looking good following positive news from uranium projects in Arizona and Utah, closing up 16.67 per cent at 2.625p.

The FTSE 250 index rose by 1.49% or 93.35 points to 6351.92 while the FTSE 100 rose by 1.73 per cent at 4,077.78 points.

Sterling continued its steady and consistent rise against all four leading currencies:

Pound/US dollar 1.444

Pound/Euro 1.1127

Pound/Japanese Yen 128.52

Pound/Swiss Franc 1.66605

On Wall Street cautious rises were also the order of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 141.50, to close at 8078. 36. Nasdaq also rose 21.87 points to 1516.3

Panasonic Corp. said Wednesday it will slash 15,000 jobs and shut down 27 plants worldwide to cope with plunging demand for its TVs, semiconductors and other electronics products.

The world’s largest maker of plasma display TVs also announced a net loss for the October-December quarter and lowered its forecast for the fiscal year through March to a net loss of 380 billion yen ($4.2 billion), its first annual loss in six years.

The Osaka-based manufacturer plans to cut the jobs — half of which will come in Japan — by the end of March 2010. They amount to about 5 percent of its 300,000-strong global work force.

Panasonic are due to temporary close fourteen overseas plants as well as thirteen in Japan to adjust production and cut costs, a company spokesman announced.

In Australia, the Platinum Australia requested suspension on the Australian Stock Exchange when announcing the need to urgently raise capital, with shares falling 15.87 per cent.