Q: China will be the only single country market for Nokia-Siemens Networks.
Why do you put China in such an important place, and what are your expectations
for this new entity in the China market?
A: When we looked at our business in the structure, we settled on six
business units and seven regions, and one region is China.
And why is China a region? Well, because it's a huge market. It's a
fast-growing market. It's a market full of opportunities and it's big enough and
different enough to warrant actually treating it as a region.
Q: What will be the major challenges for the merger?
A: I think the size is obviously very large and with size comes complexity.
As we are two large businesses present in many countries and we have to bring
these activities together, we have to bring our portfolio of products together
and that brings complexity.
Also we also have to bring different cultures together as well.
There are also some very practical issues.
We have about 100 days to make Nokia-Siemens Networks go live. This new
company will have around 60,000 employees, around 300 mobile customers, around
150 fixed customers.
So what that means is in January we need to make sure that we can pay 60,000
people, that we can receive orders from 450 customers, that we can deliver
equipment and services to 450 customers, that we can issue invoices to 450
customers, that we can collect the receivables from 450 customers.
And actually that is a remarkably complex undertaking that we have to have in
a very short amount of time ... but we will do it.
Q: Talking about cultures, some people say there are similarities because
Siemens and Nokia are both European companies while others claim there is still
a big difference as German and Finnish cultures are somewhat deep-rooted.
How will you address this challenge?
A: It's a very good question. Siemens is a 160-year-old company and Nokia is
a 140-year-old company and when you are dealing with companies that have such
long histories there are cultures that build up.
Every company, every country, has its own culture. But there are some strong
similarities. If you look at the 60,000 people that will work in the company,
two-thirds of them actually or thereabouts will work outside of Finland and
Germany and many of us actually including myself come from either Finland or
Germany, so both companies are outward-looking and global.
Both companies are very fine engineering companies. Both companies are very
pragmatic, grounded, direct and open in their culture.
But we're different, because one has its roots in Finland and one has its
roots in Germany. But in a globalizing world the diversity actually can be a
competitive advantage. We don't live in a homogenous world.
I think as I look at the differences, the one that jumps
most into mind is that at Nokia we are more informal while Siemens is more
formal. But that is a difference, rather than a good or bad thing. But I don't
see this as a major issue or challenge.
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