Nokia Siemens expresses confidence in wake of Nortel deal

Nokia Siemens Networks will close its planned acquisition of Nortel Networks' CDMA and LTE assets by the third quarter of this year. In addition, the company said it's confident that in the wake of the deal it will win contracts from Verizon Wireless.

Nortel last Friday said it would liquidate and sell its largest wireless assets to Nokia Siemens for $650 million. The deal will push Nokia Siemens to the No. 2 position in the CDMA infrastructure market, right behind market leader Alcatel-Lucent. Nokia Siemens CEO Simon Beresford-Wylie told reporters in a conference call yesterday that the deal would boost the company's mobile infrastructure market share in North America from 5.5. percent to more than 30 percent, based on 2008 data.

"We still need to work through the various bankruptcy and regulatory processes in Canada and the U.S. but we are optimistic that we should be able to do this relatively quickly and close by the middle of the third quarter of 2009," Beresford-Wylie said. 

Beresford-Wylie also dismissed suggestions it would struggle to secure LTE infrastructure deals with U.S. wireless carriers, adding that he thought Nokia Siemens was in a better position to get those contracts now that it was acquiring Nortel's LTE assets.

Nokia Siemens also will retain some 2,500 Nortel workers once the deal is complete. However, Nokia Siemens will not  take on Nortel's pension obligations or other debt, said Michael Matthews, the head of strategy and business development at Nokia Siemens.

For more:
- see this Reuters article [1]
- see this Toronto Star article [2]
- see this FT article [3]

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[8] [1]