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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 16 2012 @ 04:46 PM EDT |
I think we probably need to be careful about what we mean by
"conspiracy." It's one thing to market your own products, which would
include saying that anyone who favors what you are selling "gets it"
while anyone who opposes your product "doesn't get it". It's another
thing to have a plan to place a mole inside a company with the goal of
destroying the company's business. I'm loosing track of who is thinking what
happened in this conversation.
Don't forget that the large institutional investors would likely include pension
plans, mutual funds and hedge funds. They aren't going to appreciate having
their investments trashed. If they get a whiff that there was a plan to trash
Nokia, there would be hell to pay. As it is, they are facing (inevitable)
shareholder lawsuits and I'm sure the lawyers will be looking for stuff like
that in discovery. I find it hard to believe someone would risk that. It's not
impossible, though.
One other question is would Microsoft want to loose Elop? He obviously can't be
running Microsoft's business division anymore. He's such damaged goods no one
else would take him, but I don't think Microsoft could take him back, either. I
can't believe that he would want to be in his position.
I could easily believe that Elop went to the investors himself and gave them a
huge marketing pitch about Microsoft's future plans (and how it was supposedly
better than the software Nokia had) as part of selling himself as a candidate.
He might have included stuff that Microsoft really didn't want anyone at Nokia
to know. I don't know if this happened or not, but it wouldn't be all that
unusual.
Microsoft certainly *was* trying to convince the investors that Nokia should
sell Windows phones. (They were trying to convince everyone that every phone
company - except maybe Apple - should sell Windows phones.) That doesn't mean
that they told the investors specifically to hire Elop or that Elop and Balmer
had a specific plan to trash Nokia's software, though.
I don't think Elop not having experience in cell phones or consumer electronics
would have been a big deal for the investors. Nokia already had people familiar
with those things. The investors would have been looking for more of a big idea
person who could get the people at Nokia to take a broader view. Somebody with a
wide variety of experiences could have been good for that -- assuming the person
wasn't just a bunch of hot air, that is.
One more thing. This might have been somewhat the Chairman's fault. If it was
too obvious that someone was already hand-picked, there might not have been much
competition for the position. If Elop had inside information that certain
investors weren't likely to go along with what the chairman wanted, he might
have put in extra effort so that he would be in the right spot for when the
Chairman's plans fell through. As long as it doesn't involve bribes or something
like that, that's a perfectly legitimate thing to do.
No matter what the cause was, Nokia is still in the same problem they are in,
though.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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