Toyota expects first ever operating loss

Toyota, the world's second-biggest carmaker said Monday it will know its first operating loss since the 1930’s due to a global slump in car sales and a surge in the yen.

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• The Japanese company said it expects an operating loss of 150bn yen ($1.7 billion) this year, a massive decline on its previous forecast of a ¥600bn operating profit.
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•  “The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years. Toyota began making cars in the 1930s but only began keeping company record in 1941,” Toyota’s president, Katsuaki Watanabe said.
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• The company says the fall in vehicle sales over the last month was “far faster, wider and deeper than expected”, and the slowdown in trade was now spreading from the US into the once relatively strong emerging markets.
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• The global recession forced Toyota and other Japanese carmakers to cut production, slash earnings forecasts and lay off temporary and part-time workers.