Mobile phone portal Zed to negotiate personnel cuts in Finland

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The tale of the mobile telephone portal Zed as an independent company is coming to an end. Zed’s new Spanish owner, Wisdom Entertainment, is merging Zed’s operations with the LaNetro portal under its ownership.
     
Negotiations on cutting jobs are to begin with about 80 Finnish Zed employees - that is, all but a few of the company’s workers based in Finland.
      The actual number of people to lose their jobs should be revealed about six weeks from now. The Spanish owner could not be contacted on Tuesday for comment.
     
Zed, a former subsidiary of TeliaSonera, provides entertainment, communications, and information services for mobile telephone users. In August TeliaSonera decided to sell the portal to Spain for EUR 30 million.
      The deal was sealed during the weekend when German competition authorities gave their approval. The new owner immediately started to implement changes.
      The Wisdom Entertainment concern comprises eight companies which produce digital entertainment. One of these is LaNetro, whose services are largely similar to those of Zed.
     
The merger of the two portals does not necessarily mean the end of the Zed brand, the creation of which cost hundreds of millions of euros.
      LaNetro has most of its operations in Spain and South America, while Zed operates in Finland, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Malaysia, and The Philippines.
      The Spanish concern says that Zed will allow LaNetro to branch out into the European market. The company notes that Zed’s distribution network will also be useful.
     
Zed was set up by Sonera in 2000. In the two years that followed it became a Finnish symbol of unrealistic expectations in the technology market.
      There were high hopes that Zed would become the market leader of portals in the whole world. There were even plans to use some of the massive marketing budget to fly one customer into outer space. At one point Zed was valued at EUR 18 billion.
      However, the visions were never to be. Most recently TeliaSonera tried to get rid of Zed, because it no longer was seen to be part of the company’s core operations.
      Yahoo bought a part of Zed in 2002, but later returned its share to the seller.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  TeliaSonera divests mobile portal Zed (18.8.2004)

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