Struggling Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics said today it would shed more than a thousand jobs in Europe, including its whole workforce of more than 800 in Finland.
The cuts are part of an existing plan to slash up to 15,000 positions through voluntary reductions and factory floor cuts.
The chief executive of wholly owned subsidiary Renesas Mobile Europe, Juha Tenhunen, told AFP the company had been unable to find "a way to continue its activities due to the lack of a buyer" despite a search since the beginning of the year.
The northwestern Finnish city of Oulu, once a Nokia stronghold, will be especially hard hit losing 570 jobs after nearly 3,000 jobs were eliminated in the area's telecommunications sector in recent years.
In addition to Finland, the layoffs will affect Denmark (109 people), Britain (135 people) and Germany (six people), as well as 287 employees working for subsidiaries in India and China.
Renesas Electronics, the world's biggest supplier of automotive microcontroller chips, was created through a merger of the chip units of Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and NEC.
The company made a net loss of 168 billion yen (more USD 1.7 billion) in the fiscal year ending in March.
