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Sony Executives Forgo Bonuses

Tokyo — Dozens of Sony executives, including CEO Kazuo Hirai, are foregoing bonuses this year to atone for the electronics units slumping sales and profit performance, according to reports from Japan Wednesday.

Hirai and approximately 40 top managers will forgo bonuses estimated to amount to several million dollars. Nikkei and AFP reports quoted a Sony spokesman in Japan attributing the action to “to severe business circumstances, including stagnant performance in the electronics sector.”

Last year, seven top Sony executives gave up bonuses, “but the number this time is unprecedented,” the spokesman added.

Sony is in the midst of a corporate restructuring aimed at improving profitability in the electronics unit, which continues to be bashed by lower prices and weakened demand created by the sustained global economic downturn.

Sony has cut staff and recently sold buildings in Manhattan and Tokyo.

Last week, Sony doubled its annual net profit forecast for the last fiscal year to March. The company lost 456.66 billion yen in the fiscal year to March 2012, its fourth year in the red.

Recent declines in the value of the yen against the dollar have helped improve conditions somewhat for Japanese manufacturers.

The firm’s Tokyo-listed shares, which last year fell below 1,000 yen for the first time since the era of the Walkman, closed down 1.85 percent to 1,583 yen on Wednesday.

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