Rajeev Suri put his team at Nokia Oyj on a tight schedule: in just 90 days they had to hash out which products to keep and which to jettison, after gaining control of French network-equipment rival Alcatel-Lucent SA in January.

“Procrastinated discussions” and office politics, that pace was extreme even for the fast-moving world of technology, even as Nokia’s 48-year-old chief executive officer admits he’s no fan of indecision. But Suri’s urgency had a purpose. The mistakes of past mergers at the two network suppliers that dragged on for years and led to billions in losses, were intended to be avoided by him.

“The world does not wait for you. If you miss that window, then the customers diverge,” Suri said in an interview at the Finnish company’s headquarters nestled in the forest outside Helsinki.

Suri said that sooner than he expected, the company that resulted from the $18 billion deal is jelling. Ericsson AB — a global player whose products span wireless equipment, internet routing products, old-fashioned fixed lines, cable and cloud software and Huawei Technologies Co. are the two companies that Nokia considers as competitors and hence time is truly of essence for Suri in an industry beset by sliding revenue.

“Are we there yet? Not fully, but I think we are absolutely, in the first nine months, talking a lot less about integration and talking a lot more about the next development steps of the company,” Suri said.

In evidence that Nokia is becoming the company he envisions, with a balance of entrepreneurial drive, innovation, structure and discipline, Suri says that Nokia has raised its cost-savings targets and sped the timeline for their implementation.

But not all signs are positive. As phone-carrier spending slowed, Nokia’s second-quarter revenue dropped 11 percent on a pro forma basis. The next round, dubbed 5G, isn’t ready for wide deployment and customers in key markets such as the U.S. have largely built so-called fourth-generation networks. According to Deutsche Bank AG, there is expected to be shrinkage industrywide in the wireless-network equipment sales.

While Ericsson has plunged 31 percent, a 25 percent drop in Nokia’s shares this year has been caused by the market malaise.

“Nokia is a good quality company but there are major risks. The integration is going to take a couple of years — for now it’s better to stay on the sidelines,” said Mikael Rautanen, an analyst at Inderes in Helsinki who has a reduce rating on the stock.

Suri is guiding the latest incarnation for a 151-year-old company that has its origins in the paper industry, then moved into rubber boots and tires and ultimately became a household name for its mobile phones and he describes his philosophy as valuing “pragmatism over perfection.”

Before succumbing to competition from Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., selling the handset business in 2014 to Microsoft Corp. for more than $7 billion, Nokia dominated that market for a decade.

During the company’s painful effort to jointly operate a network venture with Siemens AG set up in 2007, Bottom of Form

Suri’s, a native of India, experiences as a Nokia regional manager in Asia guides his decision-making. After Suri was promoted to head the JV and implemented a program to slash nearly a quarter of the workforce, the business became profitable after posting losses for five years. Nokia eventually bought out Siemens in 2013 for 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion).

(Adapted from Bloomberg)

Categories: Economy & Finance, Strategy, Sustainability