Light Reading Mobile – Telecom News, Analysis, Events, and Research
News Wire Feed  

NSN Sells Optical Biz to Marlin Equity

December 03, 2012 |

ESPOO, Finland -- Nokia Siemens Networks and Marlin Equity Partners announced today that they had reached an agreement for Nokia Siemens Networks to sell its Optical Networks business unit to Marlin Equity Partners in a deal that would result in the unit being established as an independent company with the goal of becoming a leading provider in the optical market.

The planned transaction is another step in the transformation of Nokia Siemens Networks into a mobile broadband specialist and will give both businesses the opportunity to concentrate investment and strategic focus on their core segments.

“During 2012 Nokia Siemens Networks has made tremendous progress in the transformation of our company to being the world’s mobile broadband specialist. Our strategic focus on our core markets has enabled us to concentrate our energy and investment in areas such as LTE where we have strengthened our global leadership position,” said Rajeev Suri, chief executive officer at Nokia Siemens Networks. “This transaction builds on that momentum and aims to provide a new home for the Optical Networks business with the focus, resources and strategic flexibility to address the opportunities in the optical market.”

Marlin Equity Partners, a Los Angeles California-based private investment firm with over USD $1 billion of capital under management, has formed a new company and intends to act as a consolidator, building an industry leader in the fragmented optical networking sector.

“We are making a major commitment to this sector, and have significant capital under management that we intend to use as a catalyst for consolidation,” said Nick Kaiser, a co-founder and partner at Marlin Equity Partners.

Pat DiPietro, Marlin Equity’s telecom sector operating partner added, “We plan to make necessary investments to deliver market-leading optical networking solutions and enhance the long-term value already provided to our global customer base.”

The new optical company will be headquartered in Munich, Germany with operations around the world and will be led by its existing management team with Herbert Merz nominated as chief executive officer.

Nokia Siemens Networks


Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

Network Computing encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

 
Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
 
Related Content
Most Popular
Read
White Papers SPONSORED CONTENT
Featured
Resource Library SPONSORED CONTENT
Trill
A Spanning Tree alternative in Ethernet networks