Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA is plunging deeper and deeper into trouble and it has now raised its one-off restructuring charge by $94m and says it will report deeper losses than earlier forecast for the year: the extra restructuring charge is for higher than previously planned redundancies in the last months of 1995; even before the huge charge, Olivetti said that its pre-tax loss for 1995 would be around $300m; the news wiped 9% off the share price and caused even more quizzical eyebrows to be raised over the company’s big rights issue last month; chairman Carlo de Benedetti dismissed talk of an alliance with Compagnie des Machines Bull SA or Samsung Electronics Co as pure fantasy.
