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BANKRUPTCY

More than 200 jobless following UIQ’s bankruptcy

The recent demise of Swedish mobile phone software company UIQ has kept bankruptcy administrators busy and led several former employees to start their own firms.

Published: 8 January 2009 12:34 CET

“We expect to be out of the building after February,” said bankruptcy lawyer Leif Ljungholm to the Sydöstran newspaper.

Ljungholm took over UIQ’s affairs just before the start of the New Year following a December 29th decision by the company’s board to file for bankruptcy.

“This bankruptcy is a little different because, in principle, operations had come to a halt before the actual bankruptcy,” said Ljungholm.

Uncertainty about UIQ’s future grew last summer when several major mobile phone operators and software providers announced the formation of Symbian Foundation, which planned to offer the popular mobile software as an open source platform.

“We were a company living on royalty fees from our intellectual property,” the now former UIQ CEO Johan Sandberg told ZDNet.

“As the IP became free of charge, Sony Ericsson and Motorola decided to work with the Symbian Foundation, not UIQ. There was no business for us anymore.”

UIQ’s 270 employees were given notice in November that their jobs were on the line, although Sony Ericsson agreed to fund the company for a couple of months to give management an opportunity to restructure or find a buyer, and to give workers a chance to find new jobs.

During the same month, however, Motorola opted not to renew the few remaining projects it had with UIQ, effectively leaving the company and its workers with nothing to do but wait for word about UIQ’s fate.

Some UIQ employees actually welcomed news of the bankruptcy for putting an end to months of uncertainty about the company’s future.

“Naturally, everyone has thought about what they plan to do and now they can put those plans into action,” said former UIQ employee Annika Grünfeld to the Blekinge Läns Tidning (BLT) newspaper.

Grünfeld’s plans including launching a new business of her own which is housed just a few floors away from UIQ’s soon-to-be-empty offices.

She said that several of her former UIQ colleagues are also planning to go into business for themselves, but that still leaves more than 200 people looking for work.

“Many people have already found new positions, but there are still 230 people here,” Sandberg told ZDNEt.

Bankruptcy lawyer Ljungholm said dealing with the fate of remaining staff and ensuring they receive their final paychecks are his first order of business.

“The second is to take inventory of assets and debts. The company has a rather large number of assets in bank accounts and outstanding receivables – even if there may be some disputes over certain claims,” he told Sydöstran.

UIQ’s roots go back to 1998 when then Lund-based Ericsson Mobile Communications set up a development lab in Ronneby in southern Sweden called Mobile Applications Lab.

In 1999, the division became a part of Symbian under the name Symbian AB, which then became UIQ Technology AB in 2002. Sony Ericsson and Motorola took over ownership of UIQ in 2007.

BANKRUPTCY

Half of Swiss hotels, restaurants risk bankruptcy: employer group

Nearly half of Switzerland's restaurants and hotels risk bankruptcy within months failing financial support to weather devastating Covid-19 measures, the sector's employer group warned Sunday.

Published: 11 January 2021 08:00 CET
Half of Swiss hotels, restaurants risk bankruptcy: employer group
Closed restaurants face bankruptcy in Switzerland. Photo by AFP

The Swiss government is expected this week to extend the closure of bars, restaurants and leisure facilities across the country until the end of February to control stubbornly high coronavirus case and death numbers.

But industry federation GastroSuisse warned in a statement that if done  without providing significant financial support, around half of businesses in the restauration and hospitality sector could go belly-up by the end of March.

The group polled around 4,000 restaurant and hotel owners, and determined that 98 percent of them already are in urgent need of financial support.

“The very existence of many of them is threatened,” GastroSuisse president Casimir Platzer said in the statement.

While restaurants and other businesses quickly received financial support when Switzerland went into partial lockdown during the initial wave of infections, GastroSuisse has complained that support during subsequent sporadic closures has lagged.

Before the crisis, more than 80 percent of Swiss restaurants and hotels were in a good or very good position of liquidity, the study showed.

But that situation quickly deteriorated.

In October, as a second wave of infections picked up steam, the organisation cautioned that 100,000 jobs were at risk.

And during the final two months of 2020, nearly 60 percent of restaurant and hotel establishments were forced to conduct layoffs for a second time, it said.

Without government intervention, a third wave of layoffs is looming, Platzer warned.

The latest closures were to be lifted on January 22, but the government said last week it wanted to extend the deadline for a further five weeks.

GastroSuisse said the final announcement, due Wednesday, needed to be
accompanied by “immediate and uncomplicated” financial support to the sector
to avoid “disaster”.

USAM, a union that represents small and medium-sized businesses in Switzerland, called Sunday for the government not to prolong or tighten measures, warning it was an “existential question” for many of its members.

Switzerland, a country of 8.6 million people, is currently registering around 4,000 Covid-19 cases a day and had by Friday seen nearly 476,000 cases and 7,545 deaths since the start of the pandemic. 

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