Nokia unveils company structure post Alcatel-Lucent acquisition

With the regulatory approval process for its proposed acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext and NYSE: ALU) moving smoothly, Nokia announced how it plans to integrate its potential new assets into its corporate structure. Those assets will include Alcatel-Lucent's submarine networks business, which Nokia will operate as a subsidiary.

Alcatel-Lucent's senior management will not be represented among Nokia's executive leadership team, the company revealed. That team, which will report to Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri, will include:

• Timo Ihamuotila, current executive vice president and group chief financial officer of Nokia, will become CFO.
• Ashish Chowdhary, Nokia Networks' chief business officer, will become chief customer operations officer (CCOO). He'll head the global Customer Operations organization and assume responsibility for customer interactions and sales across all business groups.
• Marc Rouanne, Nokia Networks' executive vice president, mobile broadband, will serve as chief innovation and operating officer (CIOO). His responsibilities will include overseeing the integration of Alcatel-Lucent, global procurement, and overseeing Nokia's FutureWorks and Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs R&D activities, among other tasks.
• Hans-Jürgen Bill, executive vice president, human resources of Nokia, will step up to chief human resources officer (CHRO).
• Kathrin Buvac, vice president, corporate strategy at Nokia Networks, will become chief strategy officer (CSO).
• Barry French, chief marketing officer and executive vice president, marketing and corporate affairs at Nokia, will serve as chief marketing officer.
• Maria Varsellona, executive vice president and chief legal officer at Nokia, will hold the chief legal officer (CLO) title.
  

Those looking for familiar faces from their dealings with Alcatel-Lucent will find a few as heads at the business group level. There will be four business groups, and Alcatel-Lucent alumni will head three of them. For example, Basil Alwan, president of IP routing and transport at Alcatel-Lucent, will become president of the IP/Optical Networks business group, which will comprise Alcatel-Lucent's IP routing, optical transport, and IP video businesses; Alcatel-Lucent's software defined networking (SDN) startup, Nuage; and Nokia's IP partner and packet core portfolio.

Meanwhile, Federico Guillén, president of Alcatel-Lucent's Fixed Networks unit, will have the same title of a business unit with the same name. The group will include Alcatel-Lucent's broadband access portfolio. Alcatel-Lucent President of IP Platforms Bhaskar Gorti will head the new Applications & Analytics business group. The unit will combine customer experience management, OSS, policy and charging, services, cloud stacks, management and orchestration, communication and collaboration, security solutions, network intelligence and analytics, device management, and Internet of Things connectivity management platforms. Alcatel-Lucent's CloudBand product also will be part of this new group.

The fourth group will focus on Mobile Networks, with Samih Elhage, current executive vice president and chief financial and operating officer at Nokia Networks, as president. Nokia Technologies (TECH) will remain as a separate entity led by its current president, Ramzi Haidamus.

Alcatel-Lucent announced earlier this week that it had abandoned its plans to sell its submarine network unit, so Nokia will retain those operations and manage them as a separate subsidiary. The leadership of the subsidiary was not announced.

Nokia says it plans to align its financial reporting under two areas: Nokia Technologies and the Networks business. The latter will include the Mobile Networks, Fixed Networks, Applications & Analytics, and IP/Optical Networks business groups. The company says it also plans to report what it called "selective financial data" for each of the four Networks business groups.

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