Nokia takes control of Alcatel-Lucent, to form a combined entity on January 14
Finnish telecom group Nokia’s all-share offer for French-American rival Alcatel-Lucent has been successful said France’s stock market regulatory body on Monday. Nokia has gained control of nearly 80% of its French-American rival Alcatel-Lucent.
Nokia now holds around 76% of shares and voting rights in Alcatel under its public exchange offer, the French financial market authority, AMF, said in a provisional report.
It said the “minimal condition” for Nokia to control at least 50 percent of shares and voting rights had been “satisfied”.
“The offer therefore is proceeding positively,” the French regulator said, adding that its final report was due Tuesday at the latest.
The offers in France and the United States will be reopened this month, and the final results will be published in February.
Once the world’s premium mobile manufacturing company, Nokia hopes the merger will help it become the world’s number one network equipment and service provider.
The Alcatel acquisition will allow Nokia to expand from telecoms networks to Internet networks and “cloud” services. The acquisition will also put Nokia into a stronger position to compete with Sweden’s Ericsson and China’s Huawei in a market for telecom network gear where limited growth and tough competition are pressuring prices.
The merged group eyes a combined revenue of nearly EUR 25 billion ($27.3 billion or roughly Rs. 18,15,80 crores).
Rajeev Suri, President and CEO of Nokia, said: “We are delighted that the Offer has been successful, and that Alcatel-Lucent’s investors share our confidence in the future of the combined company. We will move quickly to combine the two companies and execute our integration plans. As of January 14, 2016, Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent will offer a combined end-to-end portfolio of the scope and scale to meet the needs of our global customers. We will have unparalleled R&D and innovation capabilities, which we will use to lead the world in creating next-generation technology and services.”
In early December, Nokia’s shareholders gave their consent to the offer which has ignited fears of job cuts among staff both in Finland and France.
The Finnish company has offered 0.55 Nokia shares for each Alcatel-Lucent share under the public exchange offer which ended on December 23.
In 2015, Nokia recovered from the financial woes it suffered after failing to adjust to the quick rise of smartphones, which ended with it selling its unprofitable handset division to Microsoft in 2013.
