Volkswagen sales fall 20% in the UK

After the outrage about Volkswagen cars being in complete in America, they now have a large decrease in their cars being bought in the UK. Sales of Volkswagen cars fell 20% in the UK last month following the diesel emissions scandal. 12,958 new VWs were registered, down from 16,196 in November 2014. With over 3,000 cars not being sold in the UK as of this month, however that is not the only change VW is experiencing, other VW Group marques were also hit, with Seat down 24%, Skoda down 11% and Audi down 4%. Only Bentley managed an increase, with sales up from 73 vehicles to 88.

In response, Volkswagen UK said the fall might be due to a number of factors and stressed that sales in the year to the end of November were still up 5%. The company said that the market was very sensitive to special offers and that it was hard to call it a trend after two months of falling sales. But Jim Holder from Autocar and “What Car?” magazines said he believed the sales drop was a direct result of the diesel scandal. "There's a lot of evidence they have lost the trust of the buyers and that is starting to come through," he said. But in the US, where the scandal began, VW sales fell 25% last month. Much of that may be attributed to the company stopping selling its diesel models there, which accounted for 21% of its US sales before the crisis. In the UK, sales of diesel cars overall grew 3.6% in the month. Volkswagen's Golf was the fourth best selling car in the UK last month, and in the year to date.
With the last of interest in people buying their cars VW should do some market research to see why and see if they can fix it. They also still need to go to the press and make it clear that the crisis in the US is over and won’t happen again.

Nikes shares increase.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34882313  

Shares in Nike have jumped more than 5% after the US sportswear giant announced a dividend rise.
The $12bn (£7.9bn) buy-back, 14% dividend increase and sent Nike shares up almost 7 cents to $132.65.
"Built for growth while staying committed to creating shareholder value. We've proved it time and again, having returned over $23bn to shareholders over the last 14 years through repurchases and dividends." Nike stated to reports.
Nike is the biggest sportswear maker in the world, and recently announced a sharp rise in profits thanks largely to rising sales in China.
Profits for the three months to the end of August were $1.18bn, up nearly a quarter from a year earlier.

With Nike being in the press lately and making advertising press release, its not surprising that more customers we pulled in by compelling arguments. However it was Nikes presents in the news stating their current development plans are going really well and they are meeting the needs of their intended audience, share holds decided to invest. Making their changes and future plans public was good for Nike because then it let potential share holders know what the business is going to do next and whether it would be a good time for them to invest.

 

Lufthansa strikes!

113,000passngers have not been able to get to destinations due to strikes. The strikes have resulted in 929 flights that were due to leave Frankfurt and other national airports around Germany, got cancelled.

There are more strikes to come according to the members of an online club. The strikes are because of the retirement benefits not being high enough.

Monday's strike will run from 03:30 GMT until 22:00 GMT in Frankfurt and Duesseldorf and 23:00 GMT at Munich.
It will affect more than three times as many flights as a nine-hour walkout last Friday, and almost double the 520 cancelled on Saturday.

UFO, which is looking to keep early retirement benefits and pensions for its members, said it is seeking a "clear sign" of a sustainable agreement.

Lufthansa's reluctance to meet its demands is "not comprehensible" given the company just raised its full year profit forecast to €1.95bn, the union said.

Even with Lufthansa making an increasing profit and are still refusing to pay, keeping in mind that they still have to cover their fixed and variable costs.  

However with customers/passengers not getting to their destinations, and refunds being required, their increase in profit might hit a rough patch and in their breakeven analysis, might indicate changes will need to be made in order to keep making profits and not losses.


 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34761421
 

Standard Chartered may be cutting 1,000 senior jobs!

The London based bank: Standard Chartered is a bank that makes most of its profits in Asia, is a bank that is considered a “lender” bank, it lends out loans extra.

Staff were informed of the fact that there could be up to 1,000 job cuts in coming time. The jobs that will be cut are all internal; to the best of knowledge there will be no external cuts.

Standard Chartered has made drastic changes in recent times to help “cut costs.” For example the changed from chief excusive Bill Witers and made it redundant. 

The bank had recently had a finance crisis and during this time, they were in recovering and fast recovery too. In order to do this they added more sate and cut down on fixed costs. But now that they are out of the crisis they can increase their fixed costs again but that means that hey have to get rid of the access staff that they brought in. some of the safe that they brought in were purely there to help the bank with the crisis and now they are out of the crisis their services are no longer required.

But they are not done yet, in order to keep fixed costs low while still creating a sizable profit, they sent out a second email to their staff saying that on top of the 1,000 job cuts there will be “more personnel changes to come.”

As a part of recovery the bank is almost rearranging their employment scheme and hierarchy. They are cutting down on large numbers of staff, but only in the management section, the company does not seem to be looking at firing the workers at the bottom of the hierarchy. With all the employment changes already mention, they are still reducing more, they are decreasing the senior staff by 25% and they have already cut management lawyers. But its not just senior managers and management lawyers but also directors would be cut too.

After the bank has cut of 25% of their employees there will only be 3000 bankers left in the sections that have been affected by cuts.

This change has been so rapid because the recover stages are nearly over and therefore they need to prepare to be a complete bank again and be fully functional as well but they cannot do this if their fixed costs are so high because of salaries and any other employment payment. 

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34488400