Will assume role from May 1.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW DELHI: Finnish telecom giant Nokia has appointed Rajeev Suri as its new CEO, effective from May 1 onwards.
The announcement came today, along with word that current CEO Stephen Elop will be stepping down in order to defect to Microsoft. Nokia sold its flagging mobile phone division to Microsoft last year for over $7 billion, and Elop will go with it, becoming Microsoft’s new Vice-President of Devices and Services.
Born in 1967, Suri earned his B.S. in electronics and telecommunications engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology. He currently resides in Helsinki, where he has been for several years. He will relieve company chairman Risto Siilasmaa, who has been serving as acting CEO of the company in the months that Nokia was searching for a permanent replacement for Elop.
Suri, who has been with Nokia Group since 1995, is credited as being a turnaround specialist by many in the tech field, having successfully led Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) since 2009. Before that, Suri was responsible for the creation of a new service hub in India, and also spent some time as the company’s head of operations in the Asia/Pacific region.
Between 1995 and 2007, he was a part of operations across Europe and Asia in business development and market strategy, and became head of NSN’s Services Division in 2007 (he became CEO in 2009).
Now, as the CEO of Nokia, Suri will be responsible for ensuring that the company’s three remaining subsidiaries – NSN, HERE, and Nokia Advanced Technologies – remain competitive in the telecom world. Suri is expected to shift the company’s priorities more towards wireless network hardware and support, and away from the phone technology it has become known for.
But that will not be the only area of focus, as Suri has hinted at diversifying Nokia’s capabilities by buying up smaller firms and finding its way back into relevance after experiencing sharp declines over the last few years (the company was once the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer, but has subsequently dropped out of the top five).
Suri’s announcement has been well received by investors and shareholders, who saw the price of Nokia stock turn upwards after the announcement. According to Bloomberg, the company experienced its largest one-day growth spurt in six months, partly because of Suri but also because Nokia announced that it will spend almost $7 billion on a program for “dividends, share buybacks, and debt reduction.”