With many of our major customers recording unprecedented loses and retrenching staff globally, our headquarter is coming up with all sorts of cost-cutting measures in the company. They are cutting salary of executive staff, freezing pay-rise, retrenching redundant staff, encourage early-retirements, cutting down all business trips and entertainment, and forcing staff to go on unpaid leaves... Over the Lunar New Year period, production lines for discrete items at factories where countries celebrated were closed for the whole month and all the staff were forced to take unpaid leaves. I wonder if they will also plan to close down some factories or oversea offices?
Over here in Hong Kong, the president has tasked the Admin Manager to form a cost-cutting committee with members from every department to come up with ideas for cutting costs in the company. So far, my department has taken the initiative to cut costs. We have negotiated with the biggest network provider here in Hong Kong for a new network contract which is 34% down from the present contract price. I was asked to cut 11 headcounts from the warehouse but I managed to have my proposal of just cutting 6 being approved. The costs of the other 5 headcounts will be shared among the rest of the remaining contract staff who will have their hours cut. It's really all doom and gloom here but I think for those who have not acquire any assets, this is a good time to start looking around. Car prices are down, properties are down, many stocks are more than half the price they used to be when the times were good and there are sales going on everywhere! Hold on to your cash, folks and take the opportunity to invest wisely when the economy bottoms out. When? Don't ask me but I am sure that whatever goes down will come up again...
