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Friday, 17 April 2015 04:26 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The combined company will have about 114,000 employees and combined sales of around 26 billion euros. In mobile equipment it will rank a strong second, with global market share of 35%, behind Sweden’s Ericsson with 40% and ahead of Huawei’s 20%, according to Bernstein Research.
The Finnish company will give Alcatel-Lucent shareholders 0.55 shares in the combined company for each of their old shares, resulting in 33.5% of the entity being in Alcatel shareholders’ hands if the tender offer is fully taken up.
The deal will be finalised in the first half of 2016 and is expected to result in 900 million euros of operating cost savings by the end of 2019, the companies said on Wednesday.
The new Nokia will have stronger exposure to the important North American market, with key contracts with AT&T and Verizon and a fast-growing Internet routing business.
Nokia initially approached Alcatel-Lucent about buying only the wireless business but was rebuffed, leading to the broader deal, Alcatel boss Michel Combes told Reuters in an interview.
The deal carries significant risks, however. The track record of mergers in the sector – including the two that gave birth to Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent a decade ago – has been poor.
Prior deals were plagued by the difficulty of cutting costs in an R&D intensive business, rivals stealing contracts while the companies were distracted by their integrations, and struggles over power within the married firms.
Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri sought to reassure by saying he had learned from the past.
“This is not a joint venture, so there will be no governance issues,” he said on a call with investors.
“We will take a no politics, no nonsense approach to running the business, and have learned from past mistakes.”
French jobs pledge
Nokia pledged to keep France as “a vibrant centre of the combined company” and not to cut jobs beyond what Alcatel had already planned, especially protecting research and development sites at Villarceaux and Lannion.
Alcatel-Lucent has some 6,000 employees in France. Maintaining jobs was a key demand of the French state for its backing of the deal.
Nokia sold its once-dominant handset business last year after struggling to compete with smartphones by Apple and Samsung. That deal left it with the network unit, a smaller map unit and a portfolio of technology patents.
Nokia said its growth profile would improve from the deal and predicted sales growth rate of about 3.5% for 2014 to 2019.
Nevertheless some analysts remained concerned.
