Global Watch

In a landmark judgement, European Competition Commission has launched a damning indictment against 13 pharmaceutical companies involved in a nine-year conspiracy to fix the price of vitamins. It has imposed a record fine of $753 mn on eight companies which is much higher than the previous record fine of $273 mn on the shipping cartel.

According to the reports by US labour department, the pace of the corporate job cuts in the US have tapered off in the recent weeks, signalling that the worst could be over for the labour market. However, the economy is still shrinking and the unemployment rate could increase further.

Lufthansa, the German airline, has ordered all divisions to draw up plans for lay-offs. After reporting an annual loss $400 mn and break down of talk with the unions to cut costs, the management has decided to trim the staff strength by 2,000-4,000 employees in near future.

The Bank of Japan has downgraded its assessment of the Japanese economy, highlighting the impact of decline in industrial production on jobs and income. The assessment has come after the Japanese government admitted that the country was probably in its worst economic conditions in more than 20 years.

Taiwan has slashed its forecast for 2001 economic growth to a negative 2.12 per cent after the island suffered its sharpest quarterly contraction since 1975. The gross domestic product(GDP) is estimated to have declined by 4.21 per cent (y-o-y) in the third quarter. It was the second consecutive fall in the GDP growth.

The dramatic turnaround in the telecommunications market this year pushed Siemens, the German engineering group, with in a whisker of reporting its first loss since 1992 for the year ended September 2001.

The reported net profits of $1.83 mn was largely contributed by $3.46 bn in proceeds from the sale of shares in Infineon, its semiconductor subsidiary, to Siemens pension trust.