Baldauf will succeed Risto Siilasmaa as Nokia's Board Chair at the company's annual meeting in April.

Phil Harvey, Editor-in-Chief

December 3, 2019

1 Min Read
Nokia Naming Former Networks Boss Sari Baldauf as Board Chair

Risto Siilasmaa is stepping down as Nokia's board chair; he's spent 12 years on the company's board, with eight of those years as chair.

His successor, Sari Baldauf, will take the big chair in April at the company's annual meeting. Baldauf served as EVP and GM of Nokia's Networks business group from 1998 to 2005.

Siilasmaa puts a nice coat of paint on his tenure. "During my time as Board Chair, we have repositioned Nokia as a world-leading network technology business, with a strong basis for the future," Siilasmaa's quoted as saying in the press release. "This has included some fundamental strategic steps, including the sale of the Nokia mobile devices business to Microsoft, taking full ownership of the NSN telecom infrastructure business, and the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent."

Even with all those wins under Siilasmaa's belt, Nokia's shareholders are losing faith; the company's market capitalization has fallen by nearly $10 billion since late September.

"While we know that Nokia is facing some short-term challenges as the [5G] technology matures, I am confident that we have the right actions underway to address those issues. Many parts of Nokia are performing well, and we are delivering on our strategy to diversify into enterprise markets and build our software business," Siilasmaa continued in the release.

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About the Author(s)

Phil Harvey

Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Phil Harvey has been a Light Reading writer and editor for more than 18 years combined. He began his second tour as the site's chief editor in April 2020.

His interest in speed and scale means he often covers optical networking and the foundational technologies powering the modern Internet.

Harvey covered networking, Internet infrastructure and dot-com mania in the late 90s for Silicon Valley magazines like UPSIDE and Red Herring before joining Light Reading (for the first time) in late 2000.

After moving to the Republic of Texas, Harvey spent eight years as a contributing tech writer for D CEO magazine, producing columns about tech advances in everything from supercomputing to cellphone recycling.

Harvey is an avid photographer and camera collector – if you accept that compulsive shopping and "collecting" are the same.

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