There has been talk for a while about a planned sale of the building that houses Nokia global Headquarters in Espoo, Finland. Well That was reported by a Finnish media outlet and according to Appy Geek, Nokia has since confirmed the plans to sell through spokeswoman Maija Taimi. There is plans to sell Nokia’s non-core assets during these lean times and the building in the headquarters which is said to be intended for sale to Reuters, is one of them. To quote what Taimi said:
“We are evaluating different options for non-core parts, such as real estate holdings, and that includes the headquarters. However, we do not have any plans to move our headquarters,”
A separate email statement had this rejoinder, “As with most companies whose core business is not in owning real estate, it makes common business sense not to tie assets in real estate property but rather invest and focus in its core operations.”
Well, that said, we all know how attatched anyone feels to buildings one owns, but in the real essence, banks do not own the buildings they operate from, neither do the mobile network operators close to me, an example being Safaricom, which leases all the buildings they use in Nairobi and other towns in Kenya. Infact, Apple, the most prestigious company in the world, actually leases. So we have this tendency to sensationalize the situation and bundle it together with previous news from Espoo of downsizing and related stories. The selling of Espoo headquarters is meant to reduce in non-core assets.
The sale wont actually mean Nokia is moving, it wont move an inch, the mobile giant will be leasing the office premise immediately, just that they will have some loose change after the switch, a sale could fetch anything from between 160-240 million pounds which they can put to some good use. So there we have it, it’s not good news that Nokia is selling their property, but there is minimal impact as to what Nokia is worth, maybe the impact could be felt in the stock markets because of rumours, prediction and all, but the move to sell and lease is a sensible business undertaking. That is unless they are packaging themselves to be more liquid for the years long rumour that they may actually sell out to Microsoft.
IMG Credit: Wikipedia
