The Sony top guard will presumably be looking forward to getting out of the office this afternoon - it hasn't been the greatest week after all.
First up music division SonyBMG had to admit to all those dodgy payola type practices and promise to pay a $10 million fine to shut up New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. And then parent company Sony Corp reported a sizable loss for the first quarter of its current financial year, forcing it to slash its profit projections for the year by a massive 81%, from $714 million to $89.3 million.
Though to be fair to the guys at SonyBMG, while they may have caused some PR problems for the parent company this week, it is the group's electronics division that is causing the biggest financial problems - they reported a $65.2 million loss for the first quarter, compared with a $207.4 million profit last year. Sony Electronics is going to have to pull something clever out of the hat to overcome its recent sales dive because the rest of the Sony group is going to struggle to prop it up for too long.