Sony to eliminate 10,000 jobs worldwide

Sony Corp. is expected to announce this week that it will eliminate 10,000 jobs, or about 6 percent of its global workforce, the Wall Street Journal reported.

While the timing hasn’t been finalized, people familiar with the plan told the Wall Street Journal, the reductions could occur over the next two fiscal years, ending in March 2014.

The cuts are part of a larger restructuring plan devised by new chief executive Kazuo Hirai, who succeeded Howard Stringer as CEO on April 1, according to the Wall Street Journal.

More from GlobalPost: Kazuo Hirai to take over as Sony CEO

When his appointment as CEO was announced in February, Hirai warned he would make “unavoidable, painful choices” to fix or dispose of operations that were a drag on the company in order to return Sony to profitability after four straight years in the red, the Financial Times reported.

Sony estimates that its overall net loss for the financial year ending Mar. 31 was Y220bn ($2.7 billion), the Financial Times reported.

According to the Financial Times:

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.

About 5,000 positions will disappear from Sony’s payrolls through the recent sale of a chemicals subsidiary to the Development Bank of Japan, and the spin-off of a unit that produces small liquid crystal displays into a joint venture with Hatachi and Toshiba, the Financial Times reported. Most of these workers will remain employed, just not by Sony.

More cuts are expected in Sony’s unprofitable television-set division, the sources said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The plan is expected to be officially announced at a corporate strategy meeting on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

More from GlobalPost: Burma: Ready for business?