Restructuring events
European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Microsoft has announced a major restructuring in which nearly 15% of the American IT multinational’s global workforce will lose their jobs within the next year. The move involves dismissing half of the employees taken on as a result of the Nokia acquisition of April 2014 and eliminating a further 5,000+ jobs from overall operations.
Of the foreseen 18,000 job losses, given the Nokia linkage it is likely that a disproportionate share will occur in Microsoft’s European operations. An email to staff by Stephen Elop, former Nokia boss and now Microsoft executive, indicated that the company planned a “phased exit from Komarom (Hungary) and to “ramp down engineering work in Oulu (Finland)”. It also suggested a shift in the share of offshored handset production from Chinese units to Hanoi in Vietnam. The Financial Times report that around 1,100 jobs in Finland are at risk, or almost a quarter of the company’s total workforce in the country.
This is Microsoft’s biggest restructuring in its 39 year history and involves almost three times as many job losses as the last major downsizing in 2009.
Eurofound (2014), Microsoft, Merger/Acquisition in World, factsheet number 77330, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://apps.eurofound.europa.eu/restructuring-events/detail/77330.