Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
In June 2009, Germany-based KION Group (formerly Linde, Still), a worldwide leading provider of forklifts, warehouse equipment and other industrial trucks, announced the loss of 2,050 jobs in various European sites in order to cope with a decrease in orders. In Basingstoke (UK) production will be shut down and will be delocated to Aschaffenburg (Germany). Only the distribution unit is to stay. At Basingstoke, 350 jobs out of 550 jobs will be cut. At Aschaffenburg, current production lines will be partially delocated to the Czech Republic, where the number of job losses is still unknown. At Reutlingen (Germany) one of two plants will be closed. Production will partially be delocated to Hamburg (Germany). In Germany, an agreed employment pact excludes direct dismissals until 2011. Currently, 7,000 out of 8,000 employees are on short time work (of varying length). Management plans to transfer 1700 of the short time workers to a newly founded transfer agency where they will receive payments from the Federal Employment Agency, be trained and possibily be re-employed at various KION sites all over Germany. Financial Times quotes the metalworkers union IG Metall saying that job prospects and wages of the short time workers at the transfer agency are still to be negotiated.
The Group employs a global workforce of 21,000 and in 2008 achieved net sales of more than Eur 4.5 bn. On 2006, the Group was purchased by private equity investor KKR and by Goldman Sachs which planned to list the Group at the stock market. The plans have not been realised due to the recession. According to Financial Times, KKR has reduced its share.
Eurofound (2009), KION Group, Internal restructuring in European Union, factsheet number 69138, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://dev.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/69138.
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