Nokia completes Alcatel-Lucent acquisition

Nokia has received approval from the French AFM or Autorité des Marchés Financiers to acquire nearly 80 percent of Alcatel-Lucent’s shares. The acquisition must be completed on January 14.

This means that the takeover of Alcatel-Lucent by Nokia is almost complete. The acquisition involves an amount of 15.6 billion euros and Nokia will own 79.32 percent of the shares. From now on, current shareholders may sell the remaining shares to Nokia.

In a message on Nokia’s site, Rajeev Suri says he is happy that the deal has gone through. From January 14, both companies must jointly offer products and services. With the acquisition, Nokia wants to strengthen its position vis-à-vis Ericsson and Huawei in the telecommunications network market.

Alcatel-Lucent is best known as a manufacturer of network equipment, mainly for deploying mobile networks. The takeover creates a large European telecom group with forty thousand research employees and an R&D budget of 4.7 billion euros. The company continues under the name Nokia Corporation. The Finnish company is setting up a fund with a budget of 100 million euros for start-ups in France in the field of Internet of Things. There will also be a research department in France in the field of digital security.