Nokia's Elop Set To Receive $25 Million Bonus After Acquisition 196
jones_supa writes with an update on the Microsoft purchase of Nokia. From the article: "Stephen Elop, the former Nokia Oyj chief executive officer who is rejoining Microsoft, is set to get more than $25 million if the Finnish company completes the sale of its handset business to the software maker. Microsoft will pay 70 percent of the projected total amount of about 18.8 million euros ($25.5 million), and Nokia the remainder, according to a proxy filing by Nokia today. The value of Elop's reward is estimated using Nokia's Sept. 6 closing share price and may still change. Nokia shares have dropped by more than a third since Elop was hired on Sept. 10, 2010, even with the stock's gain since the sale to Microsoft was announced. Nokia shareholders are set to vote on the transaction Nov. 19. Elop will move back to Microsoft as part of the $7.2 billion takeover. He is also a candidate to succeed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer."
Re:Nokia was RIPPED OFF! (Score:5, Informative)
You might not have dug quite as deep into the ground though. It takes special skills to fail so extensively.
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:5, Informative)
You are exactly correct: embrace extend extinguish, same as always. This is no different. The extend was Elop -> Nokia, and back to MS after the damage is done.
Exactly like Belluzzo (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
What? (Score:5, Informative)
Read the blogs following Nokia and check financial statements. Although declining, Noka was profitable company until Elop took over.
Then sharp decline and mercy killing by Microsoft.
It had very bad smell from beginning.
Re:Nokia was RIPPED OFF! (Score:5, Informative)
You need to work on your pyschopathy. Everyone has some psychopathic tendencies, but if you want to understand a CEO you need to embrace and extend (but certainly not extinguish) those traits.
Stomp on little animals. Steal money from children. Get elected to some office and perform some official malfeasance. Find a trophy wife or two (or husband, lets be 21st century about this). Read up on biographies of famous people.
You seem like an intelligent, hard working person. It's not beyond your grasp.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why all the complacency? (Score:2, Informative)
Nokia was a finnish company, owned by finns. Later it was majority owned by US investment co, US mutuals funds et.c. They control the board, appoint a US CEO.
The nationality of ownership changed. Nokia listed on NYSE since 1994. The owners thought that Elop was the right man to lead the company.
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:5, Informative)
You need to read up on the facts before making such statements. First, Stephen Elop wasn't directly involved with much of the negotiation that happened between Microsoft and Nokia.
I could them telling Elop not to be involved for the sake of conflicts of interest; however, my guess is that Elop was involved on the Microsoft side about this kind of thing before he took the position at Nokia.
Secondly, and more importantly, Nokia was as good as dead without Microsoft and Windows Phone.
Quite incorrect. I'm familiar with quite a few people who worked for Nokia and they had a great line up coming about. The only MeeGo-based phone ever sold (the N900) did far better than any WIndows Phones, had rave reviews, etc. It did so well that when Nokia kicked it to the curb the employees who worked on it started a new company (Jolla) and are now producing it under a new name - SailFish - and still getting rave reviews, a good audience, etc. That could have been Nokia - only better since Nokia had a full pipeline (some of which Jolla picked up in terms of sales channels) that they could have really pumped it full with.
Nokia's decline started over a decade ago when they thought the future of mobile phones was disposable fashion accessories. When they finally got into smartphones late in the game they chose technological dead ends.
Again, incorrect. They did make some mistakes with how they handled Symbian. However, they had a very large market using Symbian and they had setup a complete transition for customers and partners to move from Symbian to MeeGo. Something that got completely tossed out in the move to Windows.
Praise Symbian or Meego to your heart's content but it's all irrelevant. Nokia didn't have the resources to turn either into a relevant platform.
Incorrect. Nokia had plenty of capability to turn MeeGo into a competitor to iOS and Android.
There was far too much effort and expense required to turn them into viable competitors to Android or iOS, let alone then getting third parties to support the platform with apps.
Again incorrect. They had a very viable platform with a large community of developers under Symbian that they were providing a means of transition to MeeGo for. They had all the third party apps - and one of the biggest and oldest app stores (Ovi) to do it with.
Some have suggested that Nokia should have adopted Android. There's already an overwhelming glut of Android devices on the market.
There is now. There were not that many when Elop started at Nokia. Android was well established - it was quickly becoming a dominant player - but many had not yet aligned themselves to it. It was obvious Android would be #1 or #2 alongside iOS. Either way, Android with a transition plan for their existing Symbian partners would have let them keep what they had - a very sizeable chunk of the mobile market.
Samsung is the dominant player by a huge margin with LG, HTC, Sony fighting over scraps.
FYI - Samsung picked up that position and margin in the wake of people's reaction to Elop's burning memo platform and total annihilation of their Symbian and MeegGo products in favor of a Windows Phone they had not yet finished making. If Elop had not pre-emptively killed MeeGo then they would have had kept that dominant position and Samsung would have had to fight to get there.
So what would be Nokia's strategy? Enter the fray as an also ran and hope that in the next 5+ years they somehow evolve into a relevant player?
That was certainly the position in taking on Windows phone.
Don't forget that they were already heavily bleeding cash by this point.
Again, as others pointed out they were still profitable - which means they were not bleeding cash. You only bleed cash when your books go