The EU fishing fleet receives a tax break of between €759 million and €1.5 billion from fuel tax subsidies each year, as well as producing nearly 7.3 million tons of CO2 just from burning fuel, according to a report published today by the Our Fish campaign.

Customers at the Iso Omena shopping centre.

A new study on the effects of payroll tax cuts on firm-level activity by Youssef Benzarti and Jarkko Harju was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Public Economics. The study shows that firm-level payroll tax reductions make firms more resilient and less hampered by negative effects of recessions. In particular, employment effects are exacerbated for men and low-skilled employees.

Solar Foods spun off after a VTT and LUT joint research project called Neo-Carbon, where the prototype was housed in a shipping container, demonstrating how little space was required. Photo: Teemu Leinonen/LUT

Research funding via the tax system has a positive effect on investment in innovation projects. This is the finding of a metastudy conducted by the ifo Institute that summarizes findings on quantitative evaluation studies in Europe, Japan, Canada, China, Australia, and the United States. “Germany has been operating this type of funding since 2020. Because it generates much less bureaucracy, it is of particular benefit to small and medium-sized enterprises,” explains Oliver Falck, Director of the ifo Center for Industrial Organization and New Technologies.

A Stockholm-bound Finnair aircraft set to take off at Helsinki Airport on 5 September 2021. (Emmi Korhonen – Lehtikuva)

FINNAIR on Tuesday reported that it carried 266,500 passengers in August, representing an increase of over 38 per cent from August 2020 and one of almost 25 per cent from July 2021.

The Finnish state-owned airline revealed that its overall capacity surged by more than 63 per cent year-on-year and 17 per cent month-on-month when measured in available seat kilometres. Its passenger load factor, in turn, improved by 0.3 percentage points from the previous year to 42 per cent.

A fund of Russia's Norilsk Nickel GMKN.MM has launched the world’s only physically backed carbon-neutral nickel Exchange Traded Commodity (ETC) which offer investors exposure to the spot prices of nickel without owning them, it said.

YIT and BTA Baltic Insurance Company AAS, representing Vienna Insurance Group, have agreed to establish a co-investment vehicle investing in rental apartments located in the Baltic countries. The total investment capacity of the vehicle is EUR 120 million.

Slush 2019. Photo by Julius Konttinen.

After a year's hiatus, Slush will host an in-person startup event in Helsinki on December 1–2, 2021. This year, 3,200 startup founders and operators and 1,500 investors are expected to join Slush, with 8,000 attendees in total. First speakers have been announced today and the public ticket sale starts on September 1, 2021 at 10:00 AM GMT+3 at slush.org.

Minna Helle, a deputy chairperson of Technology Industries of Finland, told YLE that the old familiar way of collective bargaining is expected to remain the standard in the technology industry. (Markku Ulander – Lehtikuva)

MANY in Finland are waiting anxiously to find out how many technology companies remain willing to commit to collective bargaining agreements, writes YLE.

Technology Industries of Finland announced last spring it is withdrawing from collective bargaining, stating that member companies that wish to comply with collective bargaining agreements should join a negotiating organisation it has set up to handle the negotiations in future.

As YIT announced in its first quarter interim report, the company aims to improve its competitiveness by developing its operating model. The objective of this work is to, among others, optimise resources to support operations and enable efficient strategy execution. The planning of operating model concerns all YIT’s operations and operating countries, excluding Sweden and Russia.

According to a diversity study conducted by the Finnish Venture Capital Association and KPMG now for the second time, the share of women on the boards of companies owned by private equity and venture capital investors has decreased, while the share of women in top management has increased.