Nokia on Wednesday said its planned merger with Alcatel-Lucent is progressing well and announced the names of the executives who will lead the combined company, a list that is dominated by current Nokia staff.
The Finnish vendor plans to split its networks business into four, each with a separate he ad reporting directly to CEO Rajeev Suri. It also named seven executives to head up group level functions, all of whom already work for Nokia in the same or a similar capacity to their new positions.
Nokia agreed a €15.6 billion deal for Alcatel-Lucent in April, making it very clear at the time that the deal is a takeover and not a merger. Therefore, it is perhaps no surprise that Suri is for the most part surrounding himself with his own people as he takes the enlarged company forward.
"We are making very good progress on being ready to operate as a combined company when the proposed exchange offer closes," Suri said on Wednesday.
Nokia’s Timo Ihamuotila keeps his job as chief financial officer, Hans-Jürgen Bill will serve as chief human resources officer, Kathrin Buvac takes the chief strategy officer title, Barry French retains the chief marketing officer role, and Maria Varsellona stays as chief legal officer.
Ashish Chowdhary, currently chief business officer for Nokia Networks, will take on the role of chief customer operations officer, while Marc Rouanne, EVP of mobile broadband at Nokia Networks, will become chief innovation and operating officer (CIOO).
Nokia Networks will be split into four units: Mobile Networks, Fixed Networks, Applications & Analytics, and IP/Optical Networks.
Mobile Networks will include Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent’s radio and converged core products, and managed services businesses, as well as ALU’s microwave business. Its president will be Samih Elhage, current chief financial and operating officer at Nokia Networks.
The Fixed Networks unit will essentially be Alcatel-Lucent’s current fixed networks business, and ALU’s current president of fixed networks Federico Guillén will take charge of it.
Applications & Analytics will combine both vendors’ software and data analytics-related operation s, including, amongst other things, customer experience management, OSS, policy and charging services, cloud stacks, security solutions, device management, and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. Alcatel-Lucent’s president of IP platforms Bhaskar Gorti will lead the unit.
IP/Optical Networks (ION) will comprise Alcatel-Lucent’s IP routing, optical transport and IP video businesses, software defined networking (SDN) business Nuage, and Nokia’s IP partner and packet core portfolio. It will be headed up by Basil Alwan, current president of IP routing and transport at Alcatel-Lucent.
Nokia also explained that its Nokia Technologies business will remain as a separate entity under current president Ramzi Haidamus.
And it added that it will operate Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks as a separate entity. Alcatel-Lucent had planned to sell the business, but this week announced it would instead retain the business.
