BRUSSELS, Feb 12: The economic crisis wiped out profits at many top businesses on Thursday and slammed into European factory output at a record rate ahead of key votes on an ambitious plan to kick-start the US economy.

Output at factories and refineries in the recession-hit eurozone last year fell by 2.6 per cent in December and 12 per cent for 2008 as a whole, the biggest slumps since records began in 1990, the EU’s data agency said.

“It seems certain that eurozone manufacturers will continue to find life very difficult over the coming months,” warned Howard Archer, chief European economist at London-based research group Global Insight.

The gloomy outlook was spelled out in the latest batch of dismal corporate results from around the world, with many companies bracing for worse times ahead after reporting net losses or sharp falls in profit in 2008.

Japanese electronics giant Pioneer Corp. said it would cut 10,000 jobs and quit the television business as it prepared for record-high net losses of some $1.4 billion for the current financial year to March.

French carmaker Renault, which is due to receive a controversial three-billion-euro loan from the French state on condition that it does not cut jobs in France, said its net profits had plunged 78 per cent in 2008.

“Renault expects market conditions to worsen in 2009,” the group said.

British aero engine maker Rolls-Royce reported a net loss of 1.34 billion pounds (1.90 billion dollars, 1.48 billion euros) in 2008, while Swedish-Swiss engineering giant ABB saw annual net profits slip 17 per cent last year.

“The outlook for 2009 remains uncertain,” said ABB chief Joe Hogan. Austria’s Wienerberger, the world’s biggest brick maker, said its earnings fell 60 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008 as the construction sector began to feel the full force of the global economic slowdown.

“The almost daily downward revision in growth forecasts shows that the bottom has not been reached. Just how long and how deep the crisis will be can’t be foreseen,” the Austrian company said in a statement.—AFP