Improving on its record losses of a year ago, Alcatel Alsthom SA yesterday reported a first-half loss equivalent to $77.7m, and it expects show a profit for all of 1996 of a few billion francs. A year ago, the first-half loss was $240m, and it lost $5.1bn for the year. British Telecommunications Plc is helping put the company back in the black for the year with its purchase of Alcatel’s 25% of Cofira. Alcatel also discussed its plans for Thomson SA should its bid be successful, saying the company would likely not remain a majority shareholder in Thomson Multimedia, but would not fully divest itself of the consumer electronics business. It says that as part of its restructuring, Alcatel had announced 20,000 job losses since 1995; it had 191,000 employees world-wide at the end of 1995. Telecommunications is growing at 5% to 10% a year and the aim is a core business with $27bn sales.
