Infozone Breaking World News

Toyota has announced that it will be closing all 12 of its factories in Japan for 11 days during February and March as it tries to decrease its overstock of unsold cars. Toyota has already announced that its factories will close for three days in January; this is the first time since 1993 that Toyota has halted production of its cars.

Toyota, as well as major US car manufacturers General Motors and Ford have seen a huge decline in sales over the last year, especially in the US, with Toyota suffering a 37% fall in December, worse than any other car manufacturer.

It is estimated that around 40% of the cars made in Toyota’s Japanese plants are sold in the US, and the current economic climate and the strength of the yen have all contributed to the latest sales figures.

Toyota’s sales in Japan have also been struggling, down 18% in December and nearly 7.4% down for the whole of 2008.

It was not all bad news for the struggling car manufacturer, as Toyota’s share rose by 1.3% on the stock market as the yen took a hit against the dollar.

It has been announced that the leading energy supplier Npower is to be fined in the region of £1.8 million by the energy regulator Ofgem, due to the mis-selling of contracts to its customers. The Ofgem ruling stated that Npower failed to take adequate action, after a string of complaints regarding their door-to-door salespeople.

Ofgem started its inquiry in April, with Npower dismissing six sales staff and suspending a further 17 members of the sales team in May after it had conducted its own investigation into the allegations of mis-selling contracts.

In the ruling, Ofgem said that Npower had breached the rules by failing to take adequate action. Even though there are procedures in place to deal with complaints, Npower’s managers had not used them properly.

Ofgem spokesperson Sarah Harrison added: “This decision sends a clear message to energy suppliers that failing customers and falling short of licence standards will lead to Ofgem action,”

Ofgem also went on to say that they will be proposing tougher regulations for doorstep sales, to discourage the mis-selling of contracts in the future.