Circuit City to vacant 18 million sq.ft of stores and leave 34,000 employees jobless

RICHMOND, Virginia: What began 60 years ago as a humble television store in this sleepy Southern capital ended Sunday as Circuit City closed its doors for good - its 567 remaining U.S. stores to be left broom clean and vacant.

For the last month and a half, a group of four liquidators have conducted going-out-of-business sales for what was the nation's second-largest consumer electronics retailer, selling its remaining $1.7 billion worth of inventory weeks sooner than expected.

In its wake Richmond-based Circuit City Stores Inc. will leave more than 18 million square feet (1.67 million square meters) of vacant space in a faltering real estate market. And more than 34,000 employees, some who worked through the liquidation announced in January, will be jobless.

Shareholders will likely get nothing and creditors may receive far less than what they are owed.
Circuit City filed for bankruptcy protection in November with hopes of emerging as a stronger company able to compete in the ever-expanding marketplace; shedding its $2.32 billion in debt and getting out of older real estate.

Unable to work out a sale or secure new financing, the company will instead spend its remaining days tallying money from the sale of its assets, breaking or assigning its leases and paying off its growing list of creditors. Circuit City owes nearly $625 million to its 30 largest unsecured creditors - mostly vendors who supplied the DVDs, flat-screen TVs and headphones on Circuit City shelves.

Obama: Crisis is time of `great opportunity'

WASHINGTON (AP) -- As the dreadful economic news piles up, President Barack Obama challenged the nation Saturday to not just hang in there but rather to see the hard times as a chance to "discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis."

The work week ended on another dour note, with the report of 651,000 more American jobs slashed and an unemployment rate climbing to 8.1 percent. That is the highest rate of people out of work in more than 25 years, as the recession continued to put enormous pressures on families and industries.

As the White House takes on so many huge issues at once, Obama is encouraging people to take a longer view, and not get caught up in the fits and starts. The president said in his address that the nation will continue to face difficult days in the months ahead. Still, he ended with hope.
"Yes, this is a moment of challenge for our country," Obama said. "But we've experienced great trials before. And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper -- to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis."

More layoffs: From coffee retailers to mobile phone makers - Starbucks begins announced layoffs to cut costs, Nokia to ax 320 jobs...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Starbucks Corp. on Wednesday told about 1,370 employees that their jobs will be cut as the gourmet coffee company sheds costs by closing stores and laying off employees. About 500 non-store employees in the United States and Canada, including 300 in the company's Seattle headquarters, and 870 assistant store managers learned their jobs were disappearing, the company said. Starbucks said it is offering some of the affected employees other jobs. Those who leave Starbucks will be offered severance pay, benefits and help finding another job.

HELSINKI (AP) -- Nokia Corp. said Wednesday it will close a research center in Finland and ax up to 320 jobs in a move to save costs as the global economic downturn hit the mobile phone industry. It also announced temporary layoffs. Nokia will close the research and development center in Jyvaskyla, southern Finland by the year-end, the world's largest mobile phone maker said. All 320 people working there will be affected, it said. The Finnish company is also planning to temporarily lay off some 2,500 workers at a plant in Salo, on the southern coast, although production there will continue. It will concentrate its Finland-based mobile devices R&D operations in Tampere, Oulu, Salo and the metropolitan Helsinki area.

Auto-makers: GM to cut 10,000 salaried jobs this year, Nissan to slash 20,000 jobs and sees annual loss...

DETROIT (AP) -- General Motors says it's cutting 10,000 salaried jobs, blaming the need to restructure the company amid the continued drop in new vehicle sales. The Detroit-based automaker says it will reduce its total number of salaried workers to 63,000 from 73,000 this year. About 3,400 of GM's 29,500 salaried U.S. jobs are expected to be eliminated. The job cuts are part of the restructuring plan GM submitted to Congress late last year. Most of the cuts are expected to take place by May 1.

TOKYO (AP) -- Nissan announced 20,000 job cuts Monday, the deepest reduction among Japan's automakers in battling the global downturn, as it forecast its first annual loss in nine years. Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said the latest problems were industrywide and due to the global economic slump and the appreciating yen. They didn't mean Nissan Motor Co. was reverting to its money-losing status that required a bailout from alliance partner Renault SA in 1999, he said.

Outlook Glooms: Canada lost 129,000 jobs last month; Jobless rate 7.6 pct; 598K job cuts most since '74

TORONTO (AP) -- Canada lost 129,000 jobs last month as the unemployment rate surged more than half a percentage point to 7.2 percent, marking the worst monthly drop in at least three decades. The numbers are far worse than the 40,000 job losses economists expected and outpace losses in Canada's two previous recessions in the 1980s and 1990s.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Recession-battered employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974, and catapulted the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. The grim figures were further proof that the U.S.'s job climate is deteriorating at an alarming clip with no end in sight.