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."
Ahhh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good to see the old boys network is thriving.
They don't choose candidates with successful track records, just the ones who they play golf with.
From the sounds of it, Elop completely fucked Nokia, is selling the farm to Microsoft, and will make out like a bandit and get the chance to be considered to run Microsoft.
All in all, I'd say the shareholders of Nokia are getting the shaft here. This is just corporate pillaging.
Re: Ahhh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
MS got Nokia cheap, Elop gets millions. I'd say it was a success for both of them. Nokia? They got screwed from the inside out.
Conscience? (Score:5, Insightful)
But I suppose it isn't too hard on a pillow made of 250,000 Benjamins
A comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
That'd be like giving captain Schettino a bonus when the Costa Concordia is salvaged, even though he's the dolt who sank it.
Re:Conscience? (Score:5, Insightful)
$25 million buys an awful lot of Ambien
And, hookers and blow if needed.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For some reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
And people wonder why we hate CEOs (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this right. He took over Nokia 3 years ago. In that time their stock price has dropped by more than a third. In any way you measure it, he has failed as the head of the company. So they decide to sell to Microsoft, because he has been unable to do his job well and do anything to keep them from sinking further. And he will be REWARDED with $25 million?!?!?! So for helping his company continue to fail, he will get a $25 million dollar bonus over what is I'm sure a fairly ridiculous compensation package.
And to top it off, he is on the short list of people to become the new Microsoft CEO? They really are considering basically giving him a huge promotion for being unable to turn Nokia around and letting them get so bad off that selling to MS was their only option? CEOs are absolutely rewarded for failure, because his performance can't be seen as anything other than a failure.
Well, of course. (Score:4, Insightful)
Money paid for value received. Microsoft got what they wanted, an artificially undervalued cell division, and paid accordingly.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the damage is done. Nokia is dead, the spider venom injected years ago has already liquefied the innards, all that's left is for the spider to suck the guts back out. Stopping it now isn't going to save Nokia.
All we can hope is that future traders will see incoming Microsoft leadership as a strong sell signal.
Re:And people wonder why we hate CEOs (Score:2, Insightful)
In any way you measure it, he has failed as the head of the company.
Some people will say that the company was in decline when he joined; he was successful in making the decline smaller. E.g. they didn't actually go bankrupt.
(I think those people are deluded, but that's just my opinion).
Re:And people wonder why we hate CEOs (Score:2, Insightful)
No, Microsoft is rewarding him. His job was to make Nokia cheap for Microsoft to purchase. He did a fantastic job. So they are rewarding him.
Microsoft has seen that Elop is a fantastic candidate - he is willing to ruin other companies for Microsoft's benefit. Can Microsoft ask for a more loyal candidate for a CEO?
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Also ran Android? Yeah, like anyone has made a bundle selling anything Windows on the mobile platform in a long time. It was only profitable when it was the only game in town.
As for direct involvement, well, the "tank Nokia and buy them at discount" plan had been hatched long before Elop even left Microsoft. He played his part perfectly.
Re: Ahhh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Some have suggested that Nokia should have adopted Android. There's already an overwhelming glut of Android devices on the market. Samsung is the dominant player by a huge margin with LG, HTC, Sony fighting over scraps. 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? Don't forget that they were already heavily bleeding cash by this point.
If there is a meme that needs to die about Nokia is this absurd notion that Windows Phones are somehow not competing with the Android phones.
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, Stephen Elop wasn't directly involved with much of the negotiation that happened between Microsoft and Nokia.
WTF? The CEO wasn't involved in takeover negotiations? If he wasn't involved then he wasn't CEO.
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice MS is giving most of the money. It's the payoff for selling Nokia for cheap.
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:2, Insightful)
What complete BS. Nokia's smartphone unit was making profits, had incrasing smartphone sales, and was far bigger than apple or samsung before they switched to windows phone. Only after this, sales dropped and sales turned into losses. Just look it up, the numbers are out there.
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is hogwash. Elop killed the company's feature phone business which was doing fine for the time being. Yes, Nokia needed help. Yes, it was on a slope downward and needed to figure out how to compete. But Elop didn't do that. Elop jumped forward without covering the company's behind.
That he made a wrong choice of where to jump to, that it suspicious in hindsight, those are irrelevant. He didn't work to preserve the part of the business which worked and would have kept working for several more years if he hadn't driven a stake into it -- that is his massive sin of incompetance, or perhaps worse.
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have heard rumours that Nokia was so unhappy with the sales of Windows Phones ( or more likely, their profit margin on the things) that they were considering dumping them for Android - and that the MS takeover is a reaction to that.
I'm not sure if it was the board who were pushing for that, and Elop snitched on the plans to his old buddies, or if Elop figured it all out (on his own!) that he'd end up forcing the takeover.
Re:Ahhh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Smaller shareholders were never asked and they were told that Elop was trying to run the company well and not deliberately tank it - but he tanked it deliberately and is now being paid for doing so. he should be sued, pretty much everyone in the world thinks he deliberately tanked it.
See, if the board had issued a stockmarket info piece saying that they hired Elop to destroy the firm then it would be all legit - it being legit being directly tied to if they announced their intentions to stockholders. but they didn't. if the board fucks small investors deliberately that's illegal and they of course had inside information that he was going to fuck up the company in various ways - best example of deliberately fucking up the company being to publicly announce a product line as dead - a product line that was selling more units than ever before in it's life, that same year was also the best ever for symbian app revenues for developers - in panic he announced it dead to kill it. Tying Nokia to a shitty "smart"phone platform was just icing on that shitcake.
That he is getting a bonus for finalizing Nokias death is not that much of a surprise though, since his career possibilities outside of MS are pretty much burnt - because he is a shit CEO, like, he is really really bad at that job while being quite good in taking bribes, only fscking idiot would put a guy like that in charge. I can't see Gates putting him in charge of MS because all Elop would do would be to sell it to Oracle in 4 years(He would find a way, first by announcing that Windows is dead because ,if you count smartphones and tablets as computers, then it's marketshare has tanked and will be 0% if current trends continue in 5 years(insert xckcd comic about trends) and then he would announce they're going to go all cloud with Oracles cloud tools "before it's too late" and then it would just naturally flow from there..).
Re: Ahhh ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-shill alert (Score:5, Insightful)
Before anyone bothers to carefully craft a response to the poster above, have a look at his comment history [slashdot.org]: this is one of the clearest examples of a Microsoft shill that I've ever seen on Slashdot.
Despite your post's high "informative" mod points (at the moment) I do not believe you are correct. I was curious, so I actually did take a look at MaWeiTao's comment history, as you suggested, and see no evidence of anything but fairly well-reasoned and balanced posts on a variety of subjects, including Microsoft, where he seems to hold a remarkably neutral position rarely seen on this forum. Perhaps that is the problem? His argument [slashdot.org] that the Slashdot community tends to harbor foaming-at-the-mouth purposeless hatred for everything Microsoft does even when they haven't really done anything wrong seems to have been right on point, and even the mods agreed with him on that particular day.
Evidence of being a Microsoft shill, I do not see. What I do see is that you launched an apparently unjustified ad hominem attack against someone you happen to disagree with. Just because this person has a slightly different opinion and/or perspective about Apple and/or Microsoft and/or Nokia than you do does not make them a shill. Did MaWeiTao arouse your ire precisely because he tends to post using a very neutral, non-confrontational tone of voice? Kind of like me? He fails to constantly attack Microsoft sufficiently so that makes him a shill? His opinions could hardly be considered praise. They're just neutral.
I now wait with bated* breath for someone to baselessly accuse me of being a Microsoft shill as well, for having the temerity to defend someone who has been accused (and apparently convicted by some) of being a Microsoft shill.
* Yes that is the correct spelling. Look it up. A dictionary lookup a day keeps ignorance at bay. I just made that up.