Microsoft to buy Nokia mobile phone business

[webfact]

Microsoft to buy Nokia mobile phone business

REDMOND: -- Microsoft has agreed to pay 5.44 billion euros ($8 billion) for Nokia’s mobile phone business as the Finnish company, once the biggest maker of mobile phones, struggles to maintain market share.

The deal includes paying 3.79 billion euros for the devices unit and 1.65 billion euros for patents, the companies said in a statement today.

Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop will step aside to return to Microsoft, they said.

Mr Elop has been tipped as the favourite to succeed Steve Ballmer when the Microsoft chief executive steps down next year.

Full story: http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/microsoft-to-buy-nokia-mobile-phone-business-20130903-2t2fl.html

-- The Sydney Morning Herald 2013-09-03

[lomatopo]

Not sure why this took so long?

Assume Ballmer feared Elop, and wanted to keep him at arm's length. Now that Ballmer is (soon to be) gone, Elop is the front-runner. But Elop really hasn't done much at Nokia so expect the MSFT board to go rogue for a new CEO?

[lee b]

Nokia rules

[ronthai]

Guess now is the time to buy a new phone and throw my Nokia in the trash.

[julemanden]

Guess now is the time to buy a new phone and throw my Nokia in the trash.

Give it to me then, i love Nokia phones!!!

[bkk_mike]

Wonder what Nokia still produce other than mobile phones? Will anything be left?

(I used to have a Nokia TV, back before they were a huge company in phones and just a middling-sized electronics company.)

It's probably Microsoft's only way of stopping Nokia from releasing Android phones, and be multi-OS (like Samsung, HTC, etc. - who produce Android and Windows phones.)

[lomatopo]

Microsoft gave Nokia $1 Billion back in early 2011 to drop Symbian and use Windows, and was paying ~ $250 Million per quarter, before any (paltry) royalties were paid back. I do not believe Nokia ever considered producing Android phones? I think this latest development is really just simply a result of Ballmer's announced retirement, and loss of a management voice?

Maybe Nokia will go back to making rubber boots?

[Suradit69]

If you look at the Nokia January 2014 calls, over 500,000 calls were bought (and sold) with strikes between $2 and $5. That's calls on 50,000,000 shares ... plus all the calls on shares in September, October and November ... in a crappy phone company with a consensus price target around $3.50. About 20,000 $4 to $5 calls on 2 million shares were bought last Friday alone.

Whenever there is some buyout or other major deal with a company listed on one of the US exchanges, it's always amazing how many slightly out-of-the-money calls are bought up just before the announcement.

Any time you feel you're investing with the same "information" as everyone else and that trading on inside information would be illegal in the supposedly regulated US markets, that should be a reminder that the SEC is doing diddly to keep the playing field level. Whoever sold covered calls on those shares without that special "insight" was just robbed by those with the inside information.

... and no, I wasn't a direct victim of this insider trading, but every retail investor who invests in the US markets is a victim to some extent.

[lomatopo]

Anyone familiar with MSFT's internal workings probably realized the NOK opportunity as soon as Ballmer's retirement was announced?

I doubt (m)any main-streeters are trading NOK futures?

I assume Nokia will continue with the infrastructure business, which they bought out Siemens share a few months ago?

Some speculated months ago that once Nokia was free of its capsizing low.no-margin mobile phone business it might be able to reinvent itself.

They could even manufacture Android phones, now.

[Suradit69]

Anyone familiar with MSFT's internal workings probably realized the NOK opportunity as soon as Ballmer's retirement was announced?

I doubt (m)any main-streeters are trading NOK futures?

I assume Nokia will continue with the infrastructure business, which they bought out Siemens share a few months ago?

Some speculated months ago that once Nokia was free of its capsizing low.no-margin mobile phone business it might be able to reinvent itself.

They could even manufacture Android phones, now.

"I doubt (m)any main-streeters are trading NOK futures?"

Not sure what NOK "futures" are (or main-streeters for that matter). It's not traded as a commodity. That is however, my point. Virtually no one was bothered with NOK options until very recently and, as I've shown above, calls on 50 million shares were written for Jan 2014 between $2 and $5 alone. Do you suppose that's small scale retail investors suddenly trading calls with strikes that straddle being in or out of the money?

And, the same thing happens virtually every time some relatively major deal is announced. Just before the announcement, regardless of how boring or obscure the companies are, option volume shoots up.

I doubt many people were dabbling in Heinz, either:

NEW YORK/CHICAGO, April 12 (Reuters) - Within 36 hours of

Warren Buffett's announcement of a deal to buy H.J. Heinz, U.S.

authorities froze an account linked to possible insider trading.

The speed of the crackdown on a lucrative options bet,

combined with successful prosecutions of insider trading rings,

suggested that regulators were quickly jumping on any suspicious

activity.

Yet some veterans of the options business are unconvinced.

They worry that very profitable options trading ahead of big

corporate news is undermining investor confidence in the

fairness of markets.

A study for Reuters by options research firm Schaeffer's

Investment Research of 181 such announcements in the 14 months

to the end of February shows that such activity prior to news of

takeovers, big stock repurchases or a major investment occurs on

a regular basis.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-04-12/news/sns-rt-usa-optionsmal1n0c5csp-20130411_1_insider-trading-options-doris-frankel-new-york-chicago

[General Topiks]

[Traveling Sailor]

Nokia rules

Did rule. Now that it is owned by MS it will be no better than anything else Microsoft. Think VISTA!

I guess I'll just have to purchase an iPhone.