Air France to ax 5,100 jobs before 2014 Air France said that it would eliminate more than 5,100 jobs, or 10 percent of its workforce, by the end of next year. Facing intense pressure from the French government to avoid layoffs, Air France presented a plan to unions that it said would achieve cuts through attrition and a mix of early retirements, voluntary departures and reduced working hours but warned that it might have to resort to dismissals if labor groups rejected the proposals. The staff reductions are part of a three-year plan to reduce debt and shave more than 2 billion euros, or $2.5 billion, from operating costs, with an eye to restoring the airline to profit by 2015. Air France-KLM reported a net loss of ¤368 million, or $467 million, for the first three months of 2012.
Leading economic indicators rise in May The risk of a downturn in the second half of this year is relatively low, the Conference Board said Thursday as it reported that its index of leading economic indicators rose 0.3 percent in May. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a May gain of 0.1 percent, following a decrease of 0.1 percent in April. "Economic data in general reflect a U.S. economy that is growing modestly, neither losing nor gaining momentum," said Ken Goldstein, economist at the Conference Board, a private research group. "The result is more of a muddle through."
Google OKs stock split Page and Brin wanted Google shareholders approved an unconventional stock split that will ensure that the company's co-founders remain in control. The plan passed Thursday at Google's annual shareholder meeting calls for the creation of a new class of non-voting stock. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who started Google in 1998, wanted the non-voting stock to prevent the possibility of their authority being undermined as the company issues more shares to compensate employees and finance future acquisitions. Page and Brin already control more than 56 percent of the company's voting power. Google Inc. doesn't expect the split to occur until late this year because of a shareholder lawsuit seeking to block the move.
Economist Anna Schwartz dies at 96 Anna J. Schwartz, a research economist who wrote monumental works on U.S. financial history in collaboration with the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman while remaining largely in his shadow, died Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 96. The first book that Schwartz wrote with Friedman, "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960," advanced the idea that the Great Depression had been triggered by the central bank's reduction in the U.S. money supply from 1928 until the early 1930s. That contradicted the prevailing view that it resulted from the 1929 stock-market crash.
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