Photo by: Bloomberg
French stock market authority, Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) has published the interim results of the initial offer period of Nokia's public exchange offer for counterpart Alcatel-Lucent’s securities in France and the US, declaring the offer successful, it said on Monday.
The completion of the offer was subject to the number of Alcatel-Lucent securities validly tendered into the offer representing more than 50% of the shares on a fully diluted basis. This condition had been satisfied and the offer was therefore successful.
Should the interim results be confirmed by the AMF in its notice of final results expected on January 5, Nokia would, following settlement of the offer, hold 79.32% of the share capital and at least 78.97% of the voting rights of Alcatel-Lucent.
“We are delighted that the offer has been successful and that Alcatel-Lucent's investors share our confidence in the future of the combined company. We will move quickly to combine the two companies and execute our integration plans,” commented Nokia president and CEO Rajeev Suri.
He added that the merger would create a group with unparalleled research and development and innovation capabilities, which would be leveraged to create “next-generation” technology and services.
The two companies would now begin to progress their integration plans, with the first day as an operationally combined group on January 14.
After completion of the offer, Nokia intended to delist Alcatel-Lucent's American depository shares from the NYSE, meaning they would not be tradeable on any regulated securities exchange.
Further, following closing of the transaction, Nokia planned to execute a 7-billion programme to optimise its capital structure and return excess capital to Nokia shareholders.
This programme would include about 4-billion in distributions to Nokia shareholders.
However, the company said it had no plans to provide capital returns to remaining holders of Alcatel-Lucent securities.