Ajinomoto Co. said Monday it will dissolve A.I.F. Investment Pte. Ltd., its wholly owned Singaporean subsidiary, on Thursday.

The move will leave the major Japanese seasoning maker with an extraordinary loss of 9.8 billion yen in the current business year ending March 31, Ajinomoto said.

Faced with the huge loss, Ajinomoto expects to incur a group net loss of 11 billion yen in the year, against the previous year's profit of 17.658 billion yen, the Tokyo-based company said.

Consolidated pretax profit is estimated at 42 billion yen, up 1.9 percent from the year before, on group sales of 875 billion yen, up 5.5 percent.

A.I.F. Investment, created in 1984 for asset management in bonds, has largely completed its mission now that changes have occurred in Japan's tax haven laws and in the Ajinomoto group's funding strategy, Ajinomoto said.

Yamazaki cuts losses

Yamazaki Baking Co. said Monday it will post an extraordinary group loss of 76.1 billion yen connected to the write-off of retirement and pension-related liabilities in the business year that ended Dec. 31, 2000.

The major bakery originally planned to write off the liabilities in installments over three years. But it decided to do so all at once to accelerate its efforts to achieve healthier finances because falling stock prices have cut into its pension assets, the company said.

As a result, the company cut its earnings forecast for the past fiscal year. It now expects a group net loss of 44.2 billion yen, a sharp reversal from the previously projected net profit of 7.5 billion yen.

Yamazaki Baking also lowered its forecast for group revenues to 729 billion yen from 740 billion yen, and for group pretax profit to 9.6 billion yen from 20.3 billion yen.