Nokia completed its preparations for the integration of Alcatel-Lucent's business by announcing the final line up for its board of directors and group leadership teams, ahead of the companies' first day as a combined entity on Jan.14.
The Finland-based vendor said Louis Hughes, Jean Monty and Olivier Piou will join its ten-person board of directors, with Piou additionally becoming the deputy to chairman Risto Siilasmaa after being elected as the vice chair. Nokia said that previous board member Elizabeth Doherty stepped down as planned after it successfully completed a share exchange offer for Alcatel-Lucent securities.
Nokia executives dominate the 13-strong group leadership team, which will continue to be led by CEO Rajeev Suri. Samih Elhage was named president of the combined company's mobile network's division, with Federico Guillén becoming president of fixed networks, Basil Alwan president of IP/optical networks, Bhaskar Gorti president of applications and analytics, and Ramzi Haidamus president of Nokia Technologies.
Still unclear is the role that will be played by Hossein Moiin, Nokia's current CTO. Nokia told sister publication FierceWireless in November that Alcatel-Lucent CTO Marcus Weldon, who also serves as the president of Bell Labs, would take on the CTO role in the combined company.
The board and director announcements comes as Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent prepare for their first day of combined operations later this week, and confirms previous Nokia guidance on the make up of the combined board of directors and group leadership team, which the company announced in October 2015.
Work to combine the operations of both companies has accelerated in the past week, after Nokia confirmed it had gained control of the French-U.S. company following a successful public share exchange process that has left Nokia holding around 80 per cent of its former rival.
In its statement regarding the combined board and leadership team, Nokia also announced that the boards of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia unanimously approved two services agreements that will enable the companies to begin their integration process.
Suri previously said the companies would begin offering a combined, end-to-end, portfolio of network infrastructure from Jan. 14 that would have "the scope and scale to meet the needs of our global customers."
Nokia in November announced that Markus Borchert would become its European head and Amr Karim El-Leithy head of Middle East and Africa, both of whom will report to chief customer operations officer Ashish Chowdhary. Meanwhile, Nokia veteran Ricky Corker was appointed as head of its North American business, FierceWireless reported at the time.
For more:
- see this Nokia announcement
- view this FierceWireless article
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