Business Channel 2007-03-05&07

（单词翻译）

Airbus will cut 10,000 jobs, half from its own 56,000-member workforce¹ and half from subcontractors. 1,600 of the jobs will go here in the UK, but the bulk of the cuts happen in Germany and France.

Couldn't believe the news, I couldn't believe the news. We used to build 200 planes a year when we were doing great. Now we are building 438 and it's the end. It's too late.

Airbus chief executive² Louis Gallois said the company faces three major weaknesses: costs too high, a lack of strong partners to share costs and risks and the unique structure of Airbus spread across four European countries.

It means that we have no actual industrial integration³. It means overlaps⁴. It means a, a lack of synergies.

The restructuring was months in the making. Airbus has lost billions of dollars with its superjumbo A380 plane. Three delays in delivery times led to some airlines canceling orders. Some may get money back because of the delays. Airplane orders are done in dollars. US-based Boeing benefits from the weak dollar while Airbus has suffered from a strong euro. Because Airbus stretches across Europe, there were concerns about where the job cuts would happen.

It will be fairly shared between the different countries.


Vocabulary


synergy n. If there is synergy between two or more organizations or groups, they are more successful when they work together than when they work separately; used mainly by business people.
Of course, there's quite obviously a lot of synergy between the two companies.