Business - Toyota headed for first year in the red: media report

TOKYO: Japan's largest car company Toyota is expected to run into the red for the year, which would be its first annual operating loss yet, Japanese
financial newspaper Nikkei said Friday.

In addition to the worldwide financial crisis, the rapid rise of the value of the Japanese currency, the yen, were named as the main reasons for it, according to the report which did not cite sources. Toyota in early November drastically reduced its expectations for its current business year, which ends March 31.

The prognosis for earnings was reduced to 600 billion yen ($6.7 billion), a billion yen less than had been earlier projected. But the financial situation has considerably worsened since then, the newspaper