Nokia's new CEO may face leadership brain drain

Nokia's new CEO, Pekka Lundmark, appears to be dealing with a minor leadership exodus as he takes over from outgoing CEO Rajeev Suri.

According to reports from Telecom TV, top Nokia executives, including optical/IP Presidents Basil Alwan and Sri Reddy, CTO Marcus Weldon and CMO Barry French, are all heading for the door.

The circumstances of these departures are somewhat unclear. A Nokia representative declined to provide details. However, the situation creates the potential for a brain drain – a mass exodus of talented workers from a company – that Lundmark may need to address as he asserts his leadership.

The developments come just weeks after Lundmark laid out a turnaround plan for Nokia, which has struggled to keep pace with Ericsson, its big non-Chinese rival, in the last couple of years. Specifically, the plans calls for Nokia to be carved up into four new business groups around mobile, IP and fixed, cloud and network services, and technologies. Each will prioritize market leadership, using revenues and profitability as measures of success and disregarding any cross-sales matrices.

Nokia's stock fell sharply on the restructuring news, but has since slowly regained much of its footing.

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— Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, Light Reading | @mikeddano