- August 29th, 2008
- 11:56 am
According to Chief Financial Officer, Siemens wants to attract investment from sovereign wealth funds to enlarge its long-term investor base and improve access to fast-growing markets. Siemens “would very much welcome an active involvement” by funds from the Gulf, Russia and other regions, Joe Kaeser said. “We are very open to anyone who would want to join us as an investor.” Germany are in a state confusion over whether to allow state-owned foreign funds to buy major stakes in prominent or strategic companies. But Kaeser called the GE deal with Abu Dhabi, which includes the creation of an eight billion euro (11.8 billion dollar) joint venture in the Middle East, “a meaningful and smart move.” He did not say which funds Siemens had talked with, but said they included ones from the Gulf and elsewhere, including Russia.
According to a media report, German industrial group already cooperates with Russian steel magnate Alexey Mordashov in a joint venture to build power plant components. Siemens’ share price has dipped by almost one third this year, and a major long-term investor would also provide protection against “activist investors or rivals,” it added. Though Germany drafted a law to protect companies from unwanted foreign investors which is not directed specifically against investment funds from the countries or regions in question.
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Siemens management and labour representatives have agreed on a framework to implement job cut plans, a company source revealed.
While Siemens spokesperson stated that news regarding job cuts could be expected on Wednesday.
The engineering group announced earlier this month it plans to slash almost 17,000 jobs worldwide to speed up cost savings and boost margins.
At the time Siemens had also said it planned to dispose of its industrial services unit SIMS but the source said the unit would now remain with Siemens and be restructured.
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Siemens‘ top management is too German for its own good, as well as too white and male, according to its chief executive, Austrian-born Peter Löscher.
He is quoted in an interview in the Financial Times saying that the priority for his second year in charge would be to improve the “global diversity” of managers and warned that Germany’s competitiveness could be threatened if it failed to do so.
He added, “The management board are all white males. Our top 600 managers are predominantly white German males. We are too one-dimensional.”
In fact, Siemens has a number of foreigners on its management board. Aside from Löscher is Austrian and two of the remaining seven members are American. The other five are German. However, of its 15 divisional heads, 11 are German, although more than 80% of its revenues come from outside Germany.
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OTE, Greece’s largest telecom group, which is partly owned by Deutsche Telekom, may sue Siemens for damages for allegedly overcharging, a Reuters report said.
The report quoted German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung saying that OTE has contacted lawyers in Germany and Greece to examine and prepare all necessary steps, which include a claim for damages.
Siemens was not immediately available for comment.
Earlier this week, former Siemens manager Reinhardt Siekaczek told a court that he had been asked by superiors to construct a slush-fund network to disguise payments to foreign telecoms companies after such bribes became illegal in Germany in 1998, the report said.
Such payments may have helped Siemens’ telecoms equipment division, of which OTE was a major customer, win contracts against rivals such as Cisco , Nokia and Ericsson, the Reuters report suggested This is bad news for Siemens which is already embroiled in court cases over alleged bribery and fraud.
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Siemens second-quarter net profit slid 67%, weighed down by weaker performance in its major business projects, an Associated Press report said.
The Munich-based company earned €412 million (US$641.5 million) in the January-March period, compared with €1.26 billion a year earlier, the Associated Press report said.
That was better than the €351 million (US$546.5 million) that analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast.
The slip was no surprise. According to the report, last month Siemens warned that weaker-than-expected performance in its major business projects would trim its earnings by about €900 million (US$1.4 billion).
In February, Siemens said it would reorganise its corporate telecom unit as it prepares to get out of the business, eliminating 3,800 jobs while transferring another 3,000 to partners or other units – its biggest cuts in years.
Sales rose 1% to €18.09 billion (US$28.2 billion) in the quarter, compared with 18 billion euros a year earlier, as new orders rose 12% to €23.3 billion (US$36.3 billion) from €20.8 billion in the same period last year.
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In a series of executive shuffles at European vendors, Sony Ericsson and Nokia Siemens have appointed new marketing heads, while a new CEO has taken over at smartcard firm Sagem Orga.
Nokia Siemens Networks yesterday appointed Frederic Astier as head of marketing. He was previously a management team member on the Vodafone account. He takes over from Michael Hofmann, who is joining Nokia to handle the Deutsche Telekom business.
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has appointed its Asia-Pacific head, Lennard Hoornik, as its new head of marketing. Lennard had been running Sony Ericsson’s Asian business since January 2006.
Philippe d’Andréa has become Sagem Orga’s new CEO, replacing Patrick Samier who has been reassigned to elsewhere in the SAFRAN group. D’Andrea was previously executive vice president and COO.
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Nokia Siemens Networks has signed a contract with PT Hutchison CP Telecommunications to strengthen HCPT’s GSM/W-CDMA network coverage in the islands of Java and Sumatra, and roll out GSM core networks in Kalimantan and Sulawesi.
Under the new contract, Nokia Siemens Networks is commissioned to broaden HCPT’s network coverage on Java and Sumatra, including network planning and implementation of another 2,800 base stations, Release 4 mobile softswitch and Media Gateways.
The company will also continue with its project management role and provide network management services. The solutions and services covered by the contract will start to go live from April 2008. Nokia Siemens Networks will continue to work with HCPT to accommodate expansion plans over the next three years across all the islands.
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Marc Rouanne will head up Nokia Siemens’s radio access business.
Nokia Siemens Networks Monday announced it has appointed Marc Rouanne as head of its radio access business unit.
Rouanne joins the vendor from rival Alcatel-Lucent, where he headed up the company’s convergence business group. However, Rouanne quietly left his post at Alcatel-Lucent at the beginning of 2008.
“[Rouanne] brings with him exceptional experience, having been part of the team that created GSM technology,” said Mika Vehviläinen, COO of Nokia Siemens Networks, in a statement.
Before joining Alcatel in 1998 as vice president of operations at its mobile networks division, Rouanne developed GSM products as part of Matra Communication’s R&D team, and then as director of network engineering for Nortel Matra Cellular.
Nokia Siemens said it will benefit from Rouanne’s extensive experience in working with joint ventures.
The appointment comes as Ari Lehtoranta the vendor’s current head of radio access has decided to take a leave of absence for personal reasons.
The loss of Rouanne from Alcatel-Lucent earlier this year marked another executive departure from the Franco-American company.
In 2007 its chief administrative officer Frank D’Amelio, and Mike Quigley, president of science, technology and strategy both resigned. Then, two months later chief financial officer Jean-Pascal Beaufret followed them out the door. And Jean-Christophe Giroux, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s communications technology group, was reassigned in January.
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Nokia announced a deal to sell handsets worth a total of €1.3 billion/US$2 billion to China Postel during 2008, the company’s largest market, an Associated Press report said.
Nokia said the deal includes the development of technological infrastructure and marketing with China Postel, a customer since 1998. China Postel, a subsidiary of China P&T Appliances, has a market share of 30% in that country.
Last year, Nokia sold more than 70 million mobile devices in China, an increase of 39 % on 2006.
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- February 26th, 2008
- 1:28 pm
Industrial conglomerate Siemens will cut 7,000 jobs from its corporate telecommunications unit Siemens Enterprise Networks, officials with knowledge of the plans, quoted by an Associated Press report, said.
The cuts would amount to about 40% of the telecom unit’s worldwide work force of 17,500 people, the Associated Press report further said.
Four thousand jobs would be eliminated outright while 3,000 other workers would be shifted to other units or to company partners, according to the officials who asked not to be identified by name because the official announcement had not yet been made, the report said.
The firm designs large-scale communications systems for corporations, but has come under pressure from the availability of cheaper internet-based telephone systems which has eaten away at its customer base and sales, the report further said.
The Munich-based company intends to announce the cuts after a meeting of its economic advisory committee, according to the officials, the report added.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported the planned cuts on Sunday.
Siemens, whose diverse products include trams, turbines and telecommunications equipment, will eliminate 4,000 jobs in the unit worldwide with 2,000 of those cuts coming in Germany, its home market, according to the officials.
Another 3,000 workers, including 1,000 in Germany, will be shifted to other units owned by Siemens or to company partners, they said.
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Siemens looks for investment from sovereign wealth funds (Germany)
