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| Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, June 17 2012 @ 02:16 AM EDT |
Well.
Assume that: Elop packed the Board somehow. (the top
shareholder is a pension fund with <1% of extant shares...-
Nokia's shareholders are probably far, far, far from
activists - so this isn't inconceivable.)
Assume that: Elop and the Board collaborated with M$ on
bankrupting Nokia in such a way that a buyout of the useful
assets became reasonable...
Assume that: Unequivocal documentation became available...
There's be two likely consequences. (1) The board, and
probably Elop, could end up with fiscal liability for
shareholder losses.
(2) Elop would never be able to visit Finland again.
I dunno though. I am actually perfectly willing to believe
that Nokia (by all accounts a bloated, slow-moving company)
was sufficiently far behind that its operating
systems/corporate strategy before Elop were just hopeless.
I am also perfectly willing to believe that Elop understood
that the dumbphone market was about to be eaten by China -
so changing strategies in smartphones was probably smart.
The more I think of it - the things I don't believe were
smart were:
(a) announcing the shift so loudly. (Everyone remembers
Osbourne, a company that went out of business by hyping
product 2 so much that sales on product 1 stopped...and cut
their revenue to 0...thereby ending development of product
1.)
(b) Not doing a parallel effort with Android - particularly
in Europe. Those phones would have sold well.
(c) Trying to kill Meego even though it seemed to get decent
interest
Those decisions do seem questionable.
Honestly though, I think his main punishment will be earning
a place in history as the single most unsuccessful CEO ever.
--Erwin[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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