Alu Alu! Nokia gobbles French rival Alcatel-Lucent in €15.6bn deal Nokia has today confirmed the completion of its €15.6bn (£11.5bn) gobble of French rival Alcatel-Lucent. Under the finalised deal, Nokia now holds nearly 80 per cent of outstanding ALU shares. The acquisition was announced in April, got European Union approval in July. Rajeev Suri, president and chief executive of Nokia, said …
They've also done this before with the Wireless division of Motorola back in 2010-11. Lots of cost savings to be had in rationalising product lines, but a big one-off cost of ensuring interoperability for when they have to swap out boxes in live networks, and then "training up" the new support operations in the low cost centres before canning the old ones.
The main savings are probably going to be in the manufacturing area when they get around to combining all the duplicate product lines (if they can). It will be interesting to see which boxes they EOL and what impact that has on existing contracts.
The USA has a big install base of ALU LTE, so that's going to need to be supported & maintained for a few years
"Good luck moving anything from France. Closing French operations is really hard."
Only because they all go on strike at the slightest excuse. However Nokia likely want the technology, patents and market share rather than the people. If the French walkout, Nokia can play hardball and just transfer the underlying work to a more civilised and cost effective location (like Vietnam, Poland, etc.)...
"that doesn't have a 35 hour working week "
Working week has little to do with productivity or efficiency. British and American bankers work long hours and their efforts have met with considerable downsides. I would rather have software and hardware designed by people who weren't overworked and permanently tired. Works for NASA.
Only if you don't follow the rules.
Turning up on-site in France the day after an acquisition and expecting to be able to fire everyone just means you've not done due diligence on local employment regs.
Follow the rules to the letter and it should go smoothly.
Just don't put yourself in a potential hostage or shirt shredding situation.
> Follow the rules to the letter and it should go smoothly.
Hmm - while I agree with the sentiment, in practice, and in France, things go differently. ALU itself tried to make redundancies in France within the last 5 years - basically the second you announce it the whole company (in France), excluding senior management, goes on strike, and that impacts business operations significantly. Net result is that ALU had to dramatically scale back the cuts, and then dragged some offshore jobs into France to partially offset this (and this included the closure of some UK facilities). It's difficult to see how this could go smoothly.
True. Britain has one of the lowest labour productivity stats of the developed world, certainly a lot lower than France. Just 'being visible' at work does not equal productivity. I know plenty of people who spend the last two hours at work on Facebook just because they can't be seen to be the first one to leave.
I'm not sure if I'd want a 35 hour work week, but then, I'm a workaholic. If the French can get more done in 35 hours than the Brits in 45 more power to them!
British and American bankers work long hours and their efforts have met with considerable downsides...
Oh puhleeze don't make me laugh. Long hours? Yeah in the upmarket expense fuelled boozers paid for by the mugs, sorry, customers, whilst they are cooking up another scheme to rip us off.
And what downsides? Would be talking about worldwide recession and falling wages for everyone but the bankers?
There is a reason that the word "bankers" rhymes with masturbation
"British and American bankers work long hours and their efforts have met with considerable downsides. "
What planet are you talking about? On this one, the British and American banking industries are the largest and most profitable ones going...
"They're building another brand they can sell to Microsoft."
Worked before, could work again.
Nokia might have succeeded as an Android maker but they would have been rather similar to Samsung only without the fabs, I can't see it would have worked out. Although a lot of techies like myself wanted a "real" Linux phone, I think it would never have sustained a big volume business. It is just possible that the Nokia board had excellent advice and came up with a very cunning plan. I know a lot of Nokia diehards have a completely different narrative but, looking at what happened to BlackBerry, Nokia might have been right.
"The time is rapidly approaching where the only thing the French will do well is insult tourists."
I have never been insulted as a tourist in France, even by Parisian waiters.
I speak French, am polite, do not raise my voice unnecessarily and do not expect air conditioning in old hotels. It works every time.
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