After announcing merger plans in April, today marks the first day of combined operations for telecom equipment giants Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent.
The merger is valued at $16.5 billion cumulatively and the new company employs more than 100,000 people globally. It remains headquartered in Finland with strategic business and research and development locations in France, Germany, China and the U.S.
Rajeev Suri, current head of Nokia, will continue as CEO of the new company with Nokia Chairman Risto Siilasmaa serving as chairman of the board.
“Nokia has gone through a fundamental transformation,” Siilasmaa said. “Over 99% of our more than 100,000 employees did not carry a Nokia badge just three short years ago. Our earnings, market cap and growth opportunities have multiplied. We have a powerful guiding vision of the programmable world, an extremely capable management team and a strong ambition to innovate and lead. We move forward with excitement, confidence and an ability to continue to challenge the status quo.”
“Today’s pace of technological change, driven by the transition to ‘5G,’ the ‘Internet of Things’ and the cloud, is demanding extraordinary new capabilities from the network,” Suri added. “Combining with Alcatel-Lucent comes at just the right time: we can align our product and technology roadmaps for the next generation of network technology at the outset, allowing us to take full advantage of the coming opportunities and better serve customers including communication service providers, governments, Internet players and large enterprises. Nokia has the global scale, innovation muscle and end-to-end portfolio to lead this change and ultimately expand the human possibilities of the connected world.”
