Nokia, Microsoft, Olli and Stephen

If you’ve had Twitter, newsfeeds, browsers and brain turned off this morning it may have passed you by that Nokia has announced that it is replacing its CEO with a new one from Microsoft.
Departing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo gets 18 months’ salary (€4.6 million) and 100,000 shares vesting on October 1. The shares may, by a bitter-sweet irony, be worth more slightly by then than they are now. He also gets a non-exec seat on Nokia Siemens’ Networks board.
Incoming Stephen Elop is currently President of Microsoft’s Business Division, and recently oversaw the launch of Office and SharePoint 2010. Prior to that his background was with Juniper Networks and as CEO in a seven year career with Macromedia before its acquisition by Adobe.
There’s a press call on this around midday UK time, so we’ll of course be on that. I expect chief among the queries will be how a man with a recent networks and business software background will make it in a company in the mass consumer device and services sector.
Nokia hailed his strong record in change management and software background as prime reasons for his appointment. We’ll see if there’s any more on either of those aspects on the call.