Japan's TEPCO cuts down salaries of executives, staff
Beleagured Japanese firm Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has announced that it will impose salary cuts of as much as 50 percent on top executives and about 20 percent on staff as it copes with the growing financial woes from its Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
TEPCO said the compensation of its president, chairman and other top executives by half as it copes with the worst nuclear crisis at its nuclear plant in Fukushima.
The company is now facing mounting financial woes because of the compensation it woud pay affected citizens within the area of the plant. The Japanese government has yet to agree to help TEPCO shoulder the piling bills.
The company said in reports disclosed to the stock exchange in Tokyo, the annual salary of the general staff will also be slashed down by 20 percent.
The wage reductions are part of a broader restructuring that is expected to include job cuts and asset sales, and could be announced as early as this week.
According to a company filing, the average total compensation of 19 internal directors was ¥37 million ($A420,032) in the financial year ended in March 2010.
The crisis at Fukushima Daiichi has had a wide-ranging impact on the Japanese economy and other Asian countries, and financial markets.
Earlier on Monday, Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance said it would fall short of its net profit estimate for the year ended in March by 62 percent, hurt by a roughly $US2 billion valuation loss on its massive share portfolio.
Dai-ichi is Tokyo Electric's largest shareholder with a stake of about 4 percent.
While the insurer did not name the shares on which it suffered losses, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters its write-down on Tokyo Electric stock came to about ¥100 billion. The source asked not to be named because the information was not public.
Tokyo Electric's shares have lost about three-fourths of their value since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami ripped through the Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing radiation leaks and a government-ordered evacuation of residents near the plant.
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