China approved Nokia’s 17.6bn dollar acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent

Nokia is coming back and coming to China, the biggest market of the world. Specifically, China approved Nokia Oyj’s 17.6 billion dollar takeover of the French wireless-network rival Alcatel-Lucent SA. Besides, the last important antitrust approval necessary before the acquisition will be likely to be completed next year.

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“The clearance in China completes the material antitrust review process required for the transaction,” said Nokia.

Finally Nokia made it after keenly waiting for the Chinese clearance. At first, the company worried that the local authorities would delay the deal since some big telecoms equipment providers such as Huawei and ZTE might be directly much affected by the agreement between Alcatel-Lucent (a French company) and Nokia (Finnish) businesses.

With this decision by China’s Ministry of Commerce, it helps Nokia broaden its product offering and reduce costs when taking on Sweden’s Ericsson AB and China’s Huawei Technologies Co. In addition, it is said that Nokia expects the deal to be completed in the H1 of 2016, which is also the year seeing the Nokia comeback.

Nokia deal approved

“It should not be an issue at all as Nokia has already taken firm employment engagement in France,” said Sebastien Sztabowicz, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux. He also added that the filing of the public exchange offer for Alcatel-Lucent securities and an approval from the Nokia’s shareholders (needing 50 per cent of votes to be passed) would be the next step.

“Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent will continue to co-operate with the French government to obtain formal approval from the Ministry of Economy, after which Nokia will proceed with the filing of the previously announced public exchange offer for Alcatel-Lucent securities,” said Nokia.

 With this news and others related to Nokia these days, it is like Nokia is really beginning getting back on track. Hope that they will have good business in China as well in other parts of the world!