Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Nokia Vertu sells EQT VI

Rumors were running on the web for quite some time, wanted to offload Nokia Vertu, its branch "luxury". It has now been announced as the Finn who finally gave his arm to EQT VI.
We mentioned again in April, the fragile financial health Nokia would probably do him more to continue on the path he had spent years tracing, and which had led to such rank No. 1 worldwide in the area of mobile telephony. Of its significant financial loss earlier this year had already pushed to part with some of its premises, and its terminal branch of Vertu luxury sailing in thick fog.
Nokia Vertu sells EQT VI
With a view to reducing costs, we learn so removing the end of 2013 a total of 10,000 positions. A downsizing that the manufacturer intends to achieve mainly due to the closure of its infrastructure to ULM in Germany and in Canada in Burnaby, Salo but also to his homeland.

Nokia also informs us of the sale of Virtue. Founded in 1998, it certainly was not she who had pushed the Finns on the front of the stage but it is unquestionably the leader in the telephony segment luxury. A segment that does not fit probably more in the new strategy of Nokia and Microsoft's new ally. With a thousand employees, Vertu, whose headquarters is located at Church Crookham in the UK, would be much better in other hands to continue his "journey to excellence." While rumors spoke of the investment fund Permira PERM.UL as potential buyer for $ 200 million, it was finally the Swedish group EQT VI that Nokia sells the British branch.

If the amount of the transaction were not disclosed, it should still be a valuable aid to the Finns who must casually fill a hole of some 929 million euros. Nevertheless, it does not give the entire industry since it will retain 10% of shares, not much but still.

Another major change to serve the strategic shift, Nokia launched a few months ago: the redesign of its people and especially of its leaders. Juha Putkiranta becomes Vice President of Operations and Chris Weber it becomes Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing or Timo Toikkanen takes the position of Vice President of Mobile Phones while their successors were simply thanked for the most.

Finally, the Finn says it is negotiating with the imaging expert Scadalo he intends to acquire, together with all its technologies and intellectual properties. This is notably the firm with whom we have innovative solutions Scalado Rewind and Remove, which could therefore soon found on Nokia camera phones ... It is therefore possible that the Finnish company will bring all the same pleasant surprises for later.