Big Daimler-Chrysler shake-up

The German-based car manufacturing giant, Daimler-Chrysler, is expected to announce a sweeping shake-up of its world-wide operations today.

The move is expected to involve the loss of thousands of jobs -- on top of twenty-six thousand job cuts already announced.

Details of the changes, due to be made public at a news conference in Stuttgart, are expected to include the closure of a factory in Japan, a completely new world-wide management structure, and substantial part-sharing between Chrysler and the Japanese manufacturer, Mitsubishi.

A BBC correspondent in Stuttgart says only the excellent performance of the Mercedes models in the past year prevented the whole group from going into the red.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service