Nokia Siemens needs management revamp

FRANKFURT, USA: Nokia Siemens Networks, the world's No. 2 mobile network equipment maker facing tough competition from China, needs to beef up its management team, the finance chief of Siemens said in an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt.

Joe Kaeser, Siemens Chief Financial Officer, also told Handelsblatt on Thursday that Siemens and Nokia would no longer be injecting any more money to their loss-making Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) unit.

Asked if NSN was getting a new chief executive, Kaeser said: "I am talking about strengthening the management."

Kaeser's comments came after Sibylle Wankel, a labour union head who sits on Siemens' supervisory board, told reporters on February 3 that Siemens was on the lookout for a new chief executive for NSN.

Kaeser also told Handelsblatt the NSN supervisory board was "sceptical" that the joint venture unit would no longer need further money from its parents.

"The latest mid-term business plan (of NSN) does not show any further need for capital from the shareholders. That is the clear benchmark for the NSN management," Kaeser said.

But he also said: "The scepticism also exists in the supervisory board. Therefore it is important that management is again clearly strengthened."

Nokia and Siemens, which formed the 50-50 joint venture in 2007, bailed out NSN with an additional 1 billion euros of equity last year after attempts to sell the business failed, but NSN has said it would not seek more money from its parents.

In January, NSN raised more than 1.2 billion euros from a group of 14 European and U.S. banks as it looks to restructure the business and pay costs of a big redundancy programme, a source close to the deal said last month.

NSN has said it would cut about 2,900 of a total 9,100 jobs in Germany, mostly by the end of this year.

The cuts are part of the 17,000 worldwide reductions NSN CEO Rajeev Suri announced in November, a quarter of the group's workforce.