Nokia Siemens employees transferred to partner

Nokia Siemens Networks said Monday it is to transfer some 230 staff members to Finnish IT consultancy TietoEnator’s Telecom & Media division.

It is hoped that the move will reduce the number of redundancies required following the creation of mega infrastructure vendor Nokia Siemens. The firm began operation as a merged entity on April 1.

The goal set by management when the merger was agreed was to cut around 9,000 employees from its total headcount of 60,000, with redundancies forecast to save Eur1.5bn by the end of 2010. Between 1,500 and 1,700 of jobs to be shed are based in Finland. Nokia Siemens said that this latest announcement was, “to some extent, expected to reduce the number of planned layoffs”.

Employees to be transferred are based in Helsinki and Tampere, working in the vendor’s Service Core & Applications, Operations and Business Software units.

“This agreement is good for TietoEnator and for the employees of Nokia Siemens Networks,” said Mika Vehvilainen, chief operating officer of Nokia Siemens Networks. “It reduces the need for layoffs, gives Nokia Siemens Networks additional flexibility and transfers people to a strong partner where their competencies will be a natural fit.”

TietoEnator has supplied R&D services to Nokia since 2001, and has had a relationship with Siemens since 1997.