No one in Finland scanning today's print topics is likely to miss reports on the scandal surrounding software titan Microsoft's abrupt announcement of its plans to start yet another round of employer-employee talks that threaten to leave thousands jobless in Finland, less than a year after the company shut down its thousand-employee-strong Oulu branch. Now it's the turn of the southwestern city of Salo, where a whopping 2,300 people face the boot.
Business paper Taloussanomat quotes analyst Jukka Oksaharju as saying that Microsoft is simply minimising its losses after its purchase of erstwhile Finnish phone giant Nokia.
"It was a small miracle that Nokia was able to sell off its mobile phone operations in the first place," Oksaharju says. "It was clear at the time that that enterprise was never going to fly again."
Top daily Helsingin Sanomat analyses that it was thanks to Nokia that Microsoft's phones even got off the ground, and that its meagre 2.9 percent share in worldwide smart phone sales is only going to get worse.
Ehrnrooth succumbs; murder victims criminals
Top finance boss Casimir Ehrnrooth, one of Finland's business world's leading figures, draws headlines today with his passing at the age of 84. Ehrnrooth's decades-long grip on the handle of Finnish commerce steered it towards many historic heights, Ilta-Sanomat writes, including two major bank mergers and an almost single-handed rescue of Nokia in the 1990s. He died of a sudden fit of illness while on holiday with his wife.
Another main issue in newspapers this Thursday is the background of one of two murder victims found in a house in Laajasalo. Iltalehti, for instance, details the life and times of one of the two dead men: a 46-year-old with full membership in the United Brotherhood criminal organisation and a hand in a grizzly revenge strike on a skinhead clubhouse last year. The other victim, aged 37, was a business owner with only a brief rap sheet but who likewise had ties with the Brotherhood, Iltalehti says.
Pop-rap star Cheek's second coming
Meanwhile, whether you love or hate his oeuvre, megastar Cheek has announced his return to the spotlight after a year-long break: "from stadium to stadium", runs the Ilta-Sanomat headline.
Cheek's, alias Jare Tiihonen's comeback will occur on August 22 at the large-scale rap event Blockfest in Tampere. The date is the exact anniversary of the rapper's step back from megastardom.
"We're extremely excited, this is a much-awaited return," Cheek's manager Carla Ahonius tells Ilta-Sanomat. "Jare has missed the stage greatly."
The artist has been travelling – "manically", the paper quotes him as saying – but his comeback performance promises to be full of surprises, Ilta-Sanomat reports.
