nokia ready to uner take the company of alcatel-lucent deal
Nokia's shareholders expected to approve Alcatel-Lucent deal:
Shareholders in Finnish telecom group Nokia are widely expected to approve the company's acquisition of French-American rival Alcatel-Lucent at an extraordinary general meeting in Helsinki on Wednesday.
Once the world's top mobile phone maker, Nokia hopes the merger will
help it become the world's number one network equipment and service
provider, with a combined revenue of nearly 25 billion euros ($26.5
billion).
Nokia called its shareholders to authorise the deal
after it had obtained all necessary regulatory approvals for the deal
last month, mainly from the United States, France and China.
The meeting was to begin at 1400 GMT.
Equity strategist Kristian Tammela at Nordea Wealth Management saw
little risk of the transaction being rejected by Nokia's shareholders.
"I don't think anyone expects anything other than for the decision to
be passed swiftly in good order. I expect it to be ... a piece of cake,"
Tammela told AFP.
After the approval, the last remaining step
for the Finnish group is to conclude its public exchange offer, under
which it has asked Alcatel-Lucent's shareholders to swap their stakes,
offering 0.55 Nokia shares for each Alcatel-Lucent share.
The
acquisition will allow Nokia to expand from telecoms networks to
Internet networks and 'cloud' services to better compete with its global
rivals, the Swedish group Ericsson and Huawei of China.
"The combined company would lead in key geographies like North America
and China... Our innovation capabilities will be massive, with an annual
spending of 4.7 billion euros ($5 billion)," Nokia chief executive
Rajeev Suri said in mid-November.
Analysts view the deal positively.
"In our opinion it makes sense. Of course every transaction has its
difficulties and it won't be easy but clearly it will bring the benefits
of size," Nordea's Tammela said.
Nokia hopes to close the deal in the first quarter of 2016.
This year Nokia has recovered from the financial woes it suffered after
failing to adapt to the rapid rise of smartphones, which ended with it
selling its unprofitable handset division to Microsoft two years ago.
The reformation is not Nokia's first. In its 150 years of existence,
the company has redefined itself numerous times before, from a pulp,
rubber and cable manufacturer to a television, computer and mobile phone
maker
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