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Sony to Eliminate 10,000 Jobs

TOKYO—Sony Corp. 6758.TO +0.61%plans to reduce its work force by an estimated 10,000 jobs, or roughly 6% of its global total, as part of a broader restructuring plan by Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, people familiar with the matter said Monday.

The cuts could be made over the next two fiscal years, ending in March 2014, though the timing hasn't been settled, the people said. The potential cuts were the first details to emerge of Mr. Hirai's restructuring plan since he succeeded Howard Stringer as CEO this month. The plan is expected to be announced at a corporate strategy meeting on Thursday.

Further cuts are expected in the television-set division, where Sony is forecast to be unprofitable for an eighth straight year, the people said. Last year Mr. Hirai, then in charge of Sony's TV-set business, scrapped a goal of selling 40 million sets a year. Instead, he decided to target annual sales of 20 million units and adjust the size of Sony's TV-sales operations, the people said.

The restructuring will be the company's second major overhaul in four years. In late 2008, during the global financial crisis, Mr. Stringer eliminated 16,000 jobs and closed factories. As of March 2011, Sony had 168,200 employees world-wide.

Messrs. Stringer and Hirai and five other executive officers are expected to forgo their bonuses for the fiscal year that ended in March, the people said.

Sony's plan to reduce its work force was first reported by Japan's Nikkei newspaper on Monday.

In a sign of the importance of the TV-set operations, Sony last month unveiled an organizational chart that eliminated a layer of management between the head of the TV business and the CEO so Mr. Hirai could oversee the division directly.

Last week, Mr. Hirai pledged to spread cutting-edge technologies from its professional products to more mass-market products. One example was Sony's 4K technology, a display and imaging method for presenting moving images four times sharper than existing high-definition video.

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