Telecom network gear maker Nokia has gained control of French rival Alcatel-Lucent following its $17 billion all-share offer. ”The two companies will begin to progress their integration plans, with the first day as an operationally combined group on January 14, 2016,” Nokia said in a statement.
Nokia employs roughly 1,500 people at its Irving office, 6000 Connection Drive. Alcatel-Lucent does not release local employment information, but the most-recent records show that it employed roughly 2,000 people in Plano in 2013, according to the Plano Chamber of Commerce.
The telecom major has gained control of nearly 80% of its French-American rival Alcatel-Lucent, France’s stock market regulator. 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 an interim report. The minimal requirement for Nokia to control at least 50% of shares and voting rights has been “satisfied”, it added.
Nokia, once a leader in the mobile phone market, failed to adapt to the rapid rise of smartphones, which ended with it selling its unprofitable handset division to Microsoft in 2013. In 2015 Nokia recovered from the financial woes it suffered owing to those challenges.
The combined entity with a likely revenue of nearly $27.3 billion, will continue to play a vital role in supplying and running the hardware and software that make it possible for us to use the Internet every day. Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri told Reuters, “We will have unparalleled R&D and innovation capabilities, which we will use to lead the world in creating next-generation technology and services.”
The acquisition will allow Nokia to expand from telecom networks to Internet networks and “cloud” services to better compete with its global rivals, the Swedish group Ericsson and Huawei of China.