DaimlerChrysler stock has more than halved since the eurphoria surrounding the formal merger of the U.S. Chrysler group and Germany's Daimler-Benz last November with shares falling again on Tuesday by more than 3 per cent to 46.20 euros (36.2 dollars).
By comparison, the company's shares were at a high of 123 euros in November last year.
Last Friday, DaimlerChrysler had plummeted to 49.30 euros when the company said it was expecting a worse than forecast fourth quarter result and that it was replacing the chief of the Chrysler unit with a German, Dieter Zetsche.
Just days after DaimlerChrysler dispatched Zetsche and another Stuttgart trouble-shooter, Wolfgang Bernhard, to Detroit to begin an overhaul of the Chrysler operations, the company announced that a further three American managers were leaving the group's U.S. operations.
They included distributions manager Ted Cunningham, administration chief Kathleen Oswald and communications director Tony Cervone.
Last month the fused DaimlerChrysler group reported a 78 per cent plunge in profits during the third quarter as a result of the intense competition in the U.S. car market and the Chrysler unit offering big discounts to reduce the surplus in its range of models.
While the company has not spelled out in detail its predictions for the final three months of the year, analysts are now forecasting that the group will turn in a fourth quarter loss of between 50 and 100 million euros.
Compounding DaimlerChrysler's woes have been mounting losses at Mitsubishi, the Japanese carmaker in which DaimlerChysler holds a 34 per cent stake.
This month Mitsubishi, which is Japan's fifth biggest carmaker, recently reported a 96.3 per cent leap in its net loss to 75.63 billion yen (706.8 million dollars) in the April-September period.
Mitsubishi's group sales fell by 1.5 per cent following the company's announcement in August that it had systematically covered up recalls and continued to repair defective vehicles without reporting the cases to the Japanese transport ministry.
(la/dpa)
6°C / 12°C 
7°C / 12°C 
7°C / 12°C 
9°C / 13°C 
12°C / 18°C 
