Sony set to make $100m in cuts to entertainment division

Sony has enlisted management consultancy firm Bain and Co to find $100 million – about £62 million – in cuts, a person close to the firm has revealed.

As part of the firms plan to make further cost savings and return itself to profit, the planned cuts will involve job losses to its entertainment division, which includes Sony Pictures and its games arm, Bloomberg reports.

The cuts are part of Sony’s ongoing plan to return to profitability. In its most recent financial report, it reduced its profit forecast for the entire financial year by 40 per cent.

This poor second-quarter led Moody’s Investors Service to warn that Sony’s debt rating could be reduced to “junk” if improvements are not made soon.

Some of Sony’s investors, most notably Daniel Loeb of Third Point, have called for Sony’s to break up its entertainment empire, so that it can focus its efforts on maximising profitability for its core electronics business.

Despite being temporarily silenced, the issue has risen once again in the face of Sony’s slow-moving turnaround.

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai is hosting a conference on November 21st to discuss his strategy for the firm’s entertainment division, and will seek to convince investors that holding on its entertainment businesses, as well as the prosperities they own, gives the firm a competitive advantage.

Sony’s company-wide cuts have already resulted in closure of several of its internal games studios and the restructuring of much of its business.

It’s game division is showed signs of recovery, as the firm managed a slight profit in its last quarterly report. More recently, managed to sell over one million units of its PlayStation 4 console at the system’s US debut.