divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/93495?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+I%27ll+work+for+%241+a+year%2C+says+Ford+bossch=Businessc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Ford%2CAutomotive+industry+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CUS+economy+%28Business%29%2CUS+news%2CBusinessc5=Motoring%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CUS+Economyc6=Mark+Milnerc7=2008_12_02c8=1127620c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Fordc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FFord" width="1" height="1" //divpFord's $2m-a-year chief executive, Alan Mulally, today vowed to work for an annual salary of just one dollar if the struggling US car maker has to take government money as part of a $25bn (£16.76bn) bail-out of the US car industry./ppIn a further move to woo congressional support Mulally has vowed to sell Ford's fleet of corporate jets, cancel next year's bonuses for global management and US employees as well as closing more plants, trimming its dealer network and stepping up its work on electric vehicles./ppIn its business plan, submitted to Congress today, Ford said it was seeking bridging finance of some $9bn but argued that if Congress gave its approval it would not have to draw down the money./pp"For Ford, government loans would serve as a critical backstop or safeguard against worsening conditions, as we drive transformational change in our company," Mulally said./ppAmerica's big three auto makers Ford, General Motors and Chrysler, were all due to submit business plans to Congress as they seek financial support to weather the economic downturn which has seen the industry faced with fierce competition and plunging sales./ppSome congressional leaders have already made it clear they are determined to ensure the car makers will only get their support if they come up with credible restructuring plans./ppToday Ford said that it expected both the company overall and the north American operations to be either profitable or breaking even in 2011. The forecast is based on a US market recovery which would see sales of 12.5m units next year, 14.5m in 2010 and 15.5m in 2011./ppFord has already sold Aston Martin, Jaguar and Land Rover over the last two years and yesterday said it was looking at the future of Volvo, which could involve the sale of the Swedish car maker./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/ford"Ford/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/automotive"Automotive industry/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"US economy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/_luGa_s8XM_I_e6u-1srXBgwoG8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/_luGa_s8XM_I_e6u-1srXBgwoG8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Ford Motor today submitted a plan to Congress seeking as much as $9 billion as part of a restructuring deal aimed at securing the future of the American car industry.$

The carmaker set out plans for a family of hybrid petrol-electric and fully electric vehicles as part of a blueprint to accelerate the restructuring of its loss-making North American car and truck business

Conglomerate General Electric lowered its fourth-quarter earnings guidance range Tuesday and provided details on restructuring plans.img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/money_latest/~4/s_PdpRZkxi0" height="1" width="1"/

lesspipe.sh is an input filter for the pager less as described in less's man page. The script runs under a ksh-compatible shell (ksh, bash, zsh) and allows you to use less to view files with binary content, compressed files, archives, and files contained in archives. Viewing files by accessing a device file is implemented to some extent (DOS filesystems and tar files). It supports many formats (both as plain and compressed files using compress, gzip, bzip2, or zip). Syntax highlighting for many languages is available through a helper script, "code2color". hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / A major restructuring of the lesspipe code took place. Support for even more file types has been added (e.g. jar and lzip). The test suite was enhanced, several bugs were fixed, and the code was cleaned up. The documentation has been updated. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/KfZXZ12mRlapJtapPvJOKmVMsEw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/KfZXZ12mRlapJtapPvJOKmVMsEw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-unix/~4/K08Vretf6EQ" height="1" width="1"/

lesspipe.sh is an input filter for the pager less as described in less's man page. The script runs under a ksh-compatible shell (ksh, bash, zsh) and allows you to use less to view files with binary content, compressed files, archives, and files contained in archives. Viewing files by accessing a device file is implemented to some extent (DOS filesystems and tar files). It supports many formats (both as plain and compressed files using compress, gzip, bzip2, or zip). Syntax highlighting for many languages is available through a helper script, "code2color". hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / A major restructuring of the lesspipe code took place. Support for even more file types has been added (e.g. jar and lzip). The test suite was enhanced, several bugs were fixed, and the code was cleaned up. The documentation has been updated. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/i6cw1tRvkLNmJlTy5o0O6Tnd9d8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/i6cw1tRvkLNmJlTy5o0O6Tnd9d8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/K08Vretf6EQ" height="1" width="1"/

DeSilva+Phillips, media investment bankers, has launched an Operational Restructuring practice. The practice will advise media companies, private equity funds and commercial lenders who seek assistance with financial performance issues in the current economy and debt markets. (PRWeb Dec 2, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/12/prweb1690854.htm

Hawaiian Telcom Communications Inc., the largest telephone company in Hawaii, said Monday that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company had been working with creditors since October on a debt-restructuring agreement and said it decided the bankruptcy-protection filing was the best course of action. It blamed the filing partly on increased competition, economic volatility and its failure to meet capital expenditure needs.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=YqXCO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=YqXCO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=3xWro"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=3xWro" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=PQEFo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=PQEFo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/471926169" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/5732?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Ford+may+sell+Volvo+as+car+sales+worsench=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Ford%2CAutomotive+industry+%28Business%29%2CUS+economy+%28Business%29%2CSweden+%28News%29%2CUS+news%2CBusinessc5=Motoring%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CUnclassifed+Contributors%2CUS+Economyc6=Mark+Milnerc7=2008_12_02c8=1127208c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Fordc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FFord" width="1" height="1" //divpFord may sell its luxury Swedish marque Volvo as part of a strategic review of the business. The struggling carmaker made the announcement yesterday as the fragile state of the global motor industry was underlined by plummeting sales figures for November. /ppToday, Ford and its fellow US carmakers, General Motors and Chrysler, will submit business plans to Congress in an effort to win backing for a $25bn (pound;17bn) emergency aid package. Ford's initiative came amid more bad news from the ailing industry as economic gloom and a dearth of consumer credit continue to hammer sales. Latest figures show sharp falls in car sales in Belgium, Italy, Sweden and France last month. /ppThe worst hit was Spain, where sales have fallen by almost half - the most dire data since 1993. The government is already budgeting for an euro;800m (pound;680m) package to help the automotive industry amid fears it could shed 50,000 jobs. Car sales fell 18% in Japan and were down 8.6% in South Korea./ppIn the UK, where sales fell by more than 20% in September and October - the November figures are due this week - Aston Martin said it was seeking cuts because of falling demand. The carmaker said it could cut staff by 300 and reduce the number of temporary workers by a similar amount because of the downturn./ppThe company, which has already extended the Christmas holiday shutdown by two weeks, employs 1,850, mainly in the West Midlands./ppUlrich Bez, Aston Martin's chief executive, said: "Like other premium car brands, Aston Martin has been forced to take action to respond to the unprecedented downturn in the global economy. These are regrettable but necessary measures in the extraordinary market conditions we all now face." /ppThe poor sales figures in continental Europe will make grim reading for British carmakers as the bulk of cars made in the UK are exported and a number of factories are already taking extended Christmas breaks. "The financial crisis and the weaker economy is now hitting the auto market full force," said one European automotive industry executive yesterday. /ppShare prices tumbled in Europe and the US yesterday as fears about recession and job cuts took hold. In London the FTSE 100 share index fell more than 5% to 4065.9 and there were also falls of more than 5% in the main indices in Frankfurt and Paris. In the US the Dow Jones industrial average was 4.8% lower at 8,405 in the early afternoon./ppFord's decision to launch another strategic review at Volvo - only 12 months after the last one - appears to be aimed at helping to win Congressional approval for the emergency aid. The big three US carmakers were warned by Democrat leaders last month that a bail-out would not be forthcoming unless they came up with credible restructuring plans./ppYesterday Ford said the review at Volvo was "in line with a broad range of actions Ford is taking to strengthen its balance sheet and ensure it has the resources to implement its product-led transformation plan". /ppVolvo, which was part of Ford's stable of marques under its luxury division, the Premier Automotive Group, has been looking increasingly isolated since the sale of other PAG brands - first Aston Martin and then Jaguar and Land Rover. Its sale would also help to reassure Congress that any funds would not be used to support overseas subsidiaries. /ppOther Ford asset sales include an agreement to sell part of its stake in the Japanese carmaker Mazda. The US carmakers are not the only ones seeking aid from governments. Volvo and Saab, which is owned by GM, are reported to have approached the Swedish government for financial help./ppThe European commission has pledged to help the car industry as part of a euro;200bn stimulus package and the UK's pre-budget report included measures to boost sales, although the industry would also like to see carmakers' finance arms have access to the funding being provided to banks./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/ford"Ford/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/automotive"Automotive industry/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"US economy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/sweden"Sweden/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/yXkoBKfME8UXdMuTVnCmH4g9du4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/yXkoBKfME8UXdMuTVnCmH4g9du4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/26248?ns=guardianpageName=Comment+is+free%3A+A+late+calling+to+accountch=Comment+is+freec3=The+Guardianc4=Banking+sector+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CEconomics+%28Business%29%2CMortgages+%28Money%29%2CBorrowing+and+debt%2CMoney%2CBusinessc5=Personal+Finance%2CInvestments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Markets%2CProperty+Mortgages+and+Interest+Ratesc6=Will+Huttonc7=2008_12_02c8=1127135c9=articlec10=GUc11=Comment+is+freec12=blogc13=c14=Comment+is+freeh2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" //divpA rare silver lining in this recession is that a veil of mystery is being lifted from the longstanding lending practices of British banks. Suddenly they are understood as not necessarily always in the best national economic interest./ppMortgage and business borrowers alike are newly empowered by the pound;37bn bank bail-out, and change is afoot. Yesterday the Royal Bank of Scotland, now 58% owned by the taxpayer, promised it would give distressed homeowners six months' grace before it moved to repossess their property. Last week it said it would guarantee the level and price of its overdraft commitments to small business until the end of 2009 - providing, it qualified, the risks of their situation did not substantially change./ppThese are concessions of the sort that have not been made in any postwar recession. They make it impossible for Lloyds-TSB/HBOS not to follow suit. HSBC will not want to be outdone. Only Barclays, suffering the burden of the bail-out terms from its sovereign wealth fund investors, is likely to cling to the banking tradition of being providers of umbrellas except when it is raining. It will no longer be politically acceptable./ppBankers, in fairness, are the custodians of other people's money. They have to provide cash to their depositors whenever they want it, even as they tie it up in loans to homebuyers and business. This confidence trick requires careful managing. British banks' approach has been to keep their lending as short-term as possible, to have it collateralised against bricks and mortar, to keep tight control at headquarters and to recall loans at the first sign of trouble./ppIt works, but it is brutal. It does not favour long-term investment. It biases lending towards property rather than business innovation. It does not favour manufacturing industry that needs most support in downturns. It makes home ownership high risk for working-class families. And it exacerbates recessions./ppThere is another approach, more widely used in mainland Europe and Japan. It is best illustrated by a story from yesterday's Financial Times about the Reading-based Magal Group. Owner Gamil Magal wants a pound;1.5m loan from RBS to tide over his engineering firm during the recession, collateralised against pound;12m of assets. The company is solid but now losing money; properly supported it might survive. In Europe and Japan, banks tend to be supportive of their Magals, with whom they have long-term relationships. They certainly demand restructuring and redundancy, but they shepherd the scaled-back firms to recovery, offering not just finance but advice and business knowledge./ppIn Britain banks do not support such relationships. But they do know British financial protocols. RBS, says Magal, responded to his request by sending him an insolvency expert. When RBS was privately owned, he would not have dared complain and tempt such awesome power of life and death. In today's climate, he feels he can go public./ppIf the banks together support all the firms in the manufacturing value chain then each individual firm is more likely to pull through. Magal needs supporting, but so do his customers. RBS cannot have an open chequebook, but unless it and other banks are more collectively accommodating to firms' requests, they create the very risks RBS is alert to./ppUK banks have never been properly accountable for their actions, hiding behind the myth that, as their decisions are taken in markets, they are necessarily efficient. They are not. If more businessmen speak out, and the government has some guts, the next 18 months could see a transformation in British finance. It is long overdue./pp· Will Hutton is executive vice-chair of the Work Foundation a href="mailto:will.hutton@observer.co.uk"will.hutton@observer.co.uk/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking"UK banking sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics"Economics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/mortgages"Mortgages/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/debt"Borrowing debt/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/n9llmbmU7O2cqsuftgw_d1pg-Qw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/n9llmbmU7O2cqsuftgw_d1pg-Qw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Lenders to Orchid, the privately owned pub and restaurant group that includes the Bar Room Bar and Sri Thai chains, have sent a restructuring team from PricewaterhouseCoopers into the company, with the management's blessing.

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/plants-manufacturing/" rel="tag"Plants/Manufacturing/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/chrysler/" rel="tag"Chrysler, LLC./a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/ford/" rel="tag"Ford/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/gm/" rel="tag"GM/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/earnings-financials/" rel="tag"Earnings/Financials/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/uaw-unions/" rel="tag"UAW/Unions/a/ppa href="http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN3047458820081130"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/detroit_3_450.jpg" //abr /br /The president of the United Auto Workers union, Ron Gettelfinger, said in a recent CNN interview that U.S. automakers need to tell Congress they will limit corporate pay, bonuses and severance packages in return for more a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/09/24/house-passes-25-billion-loan-for-domestic-automakers/"government loans/a. Gettelfinger also said that the Detroit Three only need the loans to hold them over during these tough times. While the first statement from the union's top player seems like basic common sense, the second seems highly optimistic... especially when one considers the size of the industry and the depth of its issues. While no single event (or loan, for that matter) will likely turn around the downslide, all of those affected by the auto industry's potential demise will be interested in tomorrow's events. That's because Dec. 2 is the day House and Senate leaders told the automakers that they need to a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/11/20/aw-snap-congressional-democrats-undercut-compromise-bailout-bil/"submit a "credible restructuring plan"/a that's convincing enough to get Congress to open its wallet when it reconvenes next week./p p[Source: a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN3047458820081130"Reuters/a]/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/01/uaw-wants-executive-pay-to-be-limited/"UAW wants executive pay to be limited/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:32:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/01/uaw-wants-executive-pay-to-be-limited/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1386797/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/01/uaw-wants-executive-pay-to-be-limited/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/6kX0B5pjuOPL3hP9fwpCuge_nfY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/6kX0B5pjuOPL3hP9fwpCuge_nfY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=XN3dUxPy"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=XN3dUxPy" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=R30M54Y1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=R30M54Y1" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/8BeLQXN4TPM" height="1" width="1"/