G.M. Suspends Production Indefinitely and Cuts Paychecks: Live Updates
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/business/stock-market-rises-coronavirus.html
General Motors said on Thursday it would suspend production at its North American factories indefinitely, lay off 6,500 salaried employees and cut executive pay, signaling that the automaker believes that coronavirus will take a serious toll on its business.
"We are actively monitoring the situation and the possible impact of the crisis on consumer demand," a G.M. spokesman, David Barnas, said. "When we can safely resume production, we will."
G.M. and other automakers shut down their North American plants in the last few days in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus. Most had hoped to restart production next week, but have now scaled back those plans.
Ford Motor aims to restart production at several plants across the United States on April 14, and a plant in Mexico on April 6. Fiat Chrysler said its plants would stay closed until April 14, "dependent upon the various state stay-in-place orders and the readiness of each facility to return to production." Toyota Motor said its North American plants would remain closed until at least April 17.
The United Automobile Workers union has been pushing G.M., Ford and Fiat Chrysler to keep their plants closed.
I
A General Motors assembly plant in Lansing, Mich. The automaker announced emergency measures on Thursday.Credit...Brittany Greeson/The New York Times
"The only guideline in a boardroom should be management asking themselves, 'Would I send my family — my son or my daughter — into the plant and be 100 percent certain they are safe,'" Rory Gamble, the union's president, said in a statement.
To cut costs, G.M. said it was suspending development work on some new models. Senior executives will take a pay cut of 5 percent or 10 percent, and defer 20 percent of their salaries to be paid at a later date. The 6,500 salaried put on furlough will receive 75 percent of their normal pay.
Wall Street shakes off record unemployment claims.
Boeing is up nearly 90 percent this week. American Airlines has jumped almost 50 percent. Carnival Corporation has soared nearly that much as well.
Wall Street has been in rally mode, as investors bid up shares of companies that were set to receive support from Washington's $2 trillion coronavirus aid bill.
With the package advancing through the Senate, the gains continued on Thursday. The S&P 500 climbed 6.2 percent, even after the government reported a staggering jump in unemployment claims by workers.
As it has been all week, investors' focus was on companies likely to get help from the spending plan that passed the Senate on Wednesday night. The House of Representatives and President Trump are expected to approve it.
Boeing rose nearly 14 percent on Thursday because the package specifically sets aside $17 billion for "businesses critical to maintaining national security" — language that was seen as intended at least partly for the aircraft manufacturer and key Pentagon contractor.
Other companies that were hit hard in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak continued to soar. American and Delta Air Lines rose nearly 2 percent. Carnival was up about 14 percent.
The gains on Thursday also spread to Europe, with major benchmarks there reversing their losses to end the day sharply higher. The FTSE 100 in Britain climbed more than 2 percent.
The three-day rally has lifted the S&P 500 by more than 17 percent, its best such run since 1933, according to data from Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices. Most of those gains came on Tuesday, when stocks rose 9.4 percent, amid growing hope that the large stimulus package would offer support to an economy crippled by the outbreak and efforts to curtail the spread of the virus.
But the economic crisis is perhaps the most daunting since World War II. On Thursday, a government report showed a record rise in weekly applications for unemployment benefits, which jumped to nearly 3.3 million from 282,000 in a week.
Until now, the record occurred in the fall of 1982, when 695,000 Americans applied for benefits in one week. At that point, the United States was more than a year into a recession, and the unemployment rate had passed 10 percent.
The numbers, released by the Labor Department on Thursday, are some of the first hard data on the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down whole sectors of American life.
-- via my feedly newsfeed
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/business/stock-market-rises-coronavirus.html
General Motors said on Thursday it would suspend production at its North American factories indefinitely, lay off 6,500 salaried employees and cut executive pay, signaling that the automaker believes that coronavirus will take a serious toll on its business.
"We are actively monitoring the situation and the possible impact of the crisis on consumer demand," a G.M. spokesman, David Barnas, said. "When we can safely resume production, we will."
G.M. and other automakers shut down their North American plants in the last few days in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus. Most had hoped to restart production next week, but have now scaled back those plans.
Ford Motor aims to restart production at several plants across the United States on April 14, and a plant in Mexico on April 6. Fiat Chrysler said its plants would stay closed until April 14, "dependent upon the various state stay-in-place orders and the readiness of each facility to return to production." Toyota Motor said its North American plants would remain closed until at least April 17.
The United Automobile Workers union has been pushing G.M., Ford and Fiat Chrysler to keep their plants closed.
I
A General Motors assembly plant in Lansing, Mich. The automaker announced emergency measures on Thursday.Credit...Brittany Greeson/The New York Times
"The only guideline in a boardroom should be management asking themselves, 'Would I send my family — my son or my daughter — into the plant and be 100 percent certain they are safe,'" Rory Gamble, the union's president, said in a statement.
To cut costs, G.M. said it was suspending development work on some new models. Senior executives will take a pay cut of 5 percent or 10 percent, and defer 20 percent of their salaries to be paid at a later date. The 6,500 salaried put on furlough will receive 75 percent of their normal pay.
Wall Street shakes off record unemployment claims.
Boeing is up nearly 90 percent this week. American Airlines has jumped almost 50 percent. Carnival Corporation has soared nearly that much as well.
Wall Street has been in rally mode, as investors bid up shares of companies that were set to receive support from Washington's $2 trillion coronavirus aid bill.
With the package advancing through the Senate, the gains continued on Thursday. The S&P 500 climbed 6.2 percent, even after the government reported a staggering jump in unemployment claims by workers.
As it has been all week, investors' focus was on companies likely to get help from the spending plan that passed the Senate on Wednesday night. The House of Representatives and President Trump are expected to approve it.
Boeing rose nearly 14 percent on Thursday because the package specifically sets aside $17 billion for "businesses critical to maintaining national security" — language that was seen as intended at least partly for the aircraft manufacturer and key Pentagon contractor.
Other companies that were hit hard in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak continued to soar. American and Delta Air Lines rose nearly 2 percent. Carnival was up about 14 percent.
The gains on Thursday also spread to Europe, with major benchmarks there reversing their losses to end the day sharply higher. The FTSE 100 in Britain climbed more than 2 percent.
The three-day rally has lifted the S&P 500 by more than 17 percent, its best such run since 1933, according to data from Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices. Most of those gains came on Tuesday, when stocks rose 9.4 percent, amid growing hope that the large stimulus package would offer support to an economy crippled by the outbreak and efforts to curtail the spread of the virus.
But the economic crisis is perhaps the most daunting since World War II. On Thursday, a government report showed a record rise in weekly applications for unemployment benefits, which jumped to nearly 3.3 million from 282,000 in a week.
Until now, the record occurred in the fall of 1982, when 695,000 Americans applied for benefits in one week. At that point, the United States was more than a year into a recession, and the unemployment rate had passed 10 percent.
The numbers, released by the Labor Department on Thursday, are some of the first hard data on the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down whole sectors of American life.
-- via my feedly newsfeed
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