Nokia (NOK) late Tuesday confirmed it had reached an agreement to buy rival Alcatel-Lucent, creating the No. 1 telecom equipment company. The deal is valued near $16.6 billion. Under the terms, Nokia will give Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) shareholders 0.55 share in the combined company for each of their old shares. The companies expect to complete the merger in the first half of 2016, pending approval by shareholders and regulators. Investors weren’t
Just days after Apple was blamed for single-handedly destroying Nokia’s phone business and hurting Finland’s economy, it’s taking the rap for killing the Japanese consumer electronics industry. And look out, fitness bands and traditional watches, you’re next on Apple’s hit list. On Oct. 13, Finland’s prime minister suggested that Apple (AAPL) could be to blame for the demise of its two biggest industries, cellphones and paper, which in turn led to an economic downturn and a ratings downgrade for the Nordic country. “We have two champions which went down,” Alexander Stubb told CNBC . “A little bit paradoxically, I guess, one could say that the iPhone killed Nokia (NOK), and the iPad killed the Finnish paper industry, but we’ll make a comeback.” On Friday, UBS analyst Steven Milunovich said that Apple had the same impact on Japan’s consumer electronics business…
The value of mergers and acquisitions involving tech companies hit $26.7 billion in the second quarter, up 87% from the year-earlier quarter and up 4.5% from Q1, says PricewaterhouseCoopers, looking at deals completed in Q2. M&A transactions in the hardware sector had the highest dollar value, at $9.5 billion, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. This included the $7.2 billion purchase of cellphone maker Nokia (NOK) by Microsoft