To whom Nokia sold Vertu
In early summer, the Finnish company Nokia announced that it had entered into an agreement with one of its private foundations to sell its unit, which produces prestigious Vertu phones. Specialists estimate the brand’s share in the high-end segment of the market at 60% with an average price of the original device of this brand on the order of € 5, 000. The cost of the entire enterprise, according to Bloomberg, reaches € 200 million.
Vertu Ltd was founded in 1998 by Nokia's leading designer, Frank Nuovo. And today, he remains the chief designer of a luxury cell phone and other luxury goods company headquartered in Hampshire, England. Despite the financial crisis of recent years, the volume of production of the main products - mobile phones - continues to grow by at least 10% each year. This is mainly due to sales of "status" products in Russia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Nokia’s parent company, however, went much worse these years - it is forced to lay off workers and look for additional funds to support production. This led to the sale of Vertu to the Swedish fund EQT VI - one of the divisions of EQT Partners AB.
EQT Partners AB was founded in 1994 and today has about 220 employees working at headquarters in Stockholm and additional offices in Europe, the USA and Asia. This private investment and venture company invests in transactions related to a change in the composition of owners of medium and large enterprises, their reprofiling, restructuring, redemption of debt obligations, etc. As a rule, the company does not operate directly, but uses 14 independent funds, such as EQT VI, participating in the transaction with Vertu. Some of these funds are part of other, larger structures. A Swedish company is interested in transactions with enterprises operating in Eastern and Northern Europe, the USA, and China, if their volume exceeds € 50 million. By financing them, the company compiles its own investment portfolio from the shares of enterprises to which EQT Partners AB delegates its own representatives or receives a controlling stake package.
The deal still needs to be approved by the European antitrust authority, after which Nokia will retain only 10% of the company's assets. Representatives of EQT Partners in the press said that through EQT VI they intend to finance the development of new Vertu products, the expansion of the retail sales network and marketing. Experts believe that a change of ownership will benefit the elite brand.
