Nokia to sell its headquarters in Finland for $222 million

Nokia to sell its headquarters in Finland for $222 million

The glass and steel building by the Baltic Sea will be bought by Finnish real estate company Exilion, and Nokia will lease it back on a "long-term basis,"

HELSINKI: Cellphone maker Nokia said it will sell its head office building in Espoo, Finland for 170 million euros ($222 million) as part of a drive to sell assets.

The glass and steel building by the Baltic Sea will be bought by Finnish real estate company Exilion, and Nokia will lease it back on a "long-term basis," it said on Tuesday.

"Owning real estate is not part of Nokia's core business and when good opportunities arise we are willing to exit these types of non-core assets," Nokia's chief financial officer, Timo Ihamuotila, said in a statement.

"We are naturally continuing to operate in our head office building on a long-term basis," he added. 

The troubled group, once a dominant force in the global market for handsets, recently posted its sixth quarterly loss in a row, burning through cash as it proceeds with a vast restructuring programme. 

In October, the company said it was looking to sell its head office building, named "Nokia House". 

Nokia, which has been trying to improve its finances through job cuts and other measures, said it planned to exit more non-core assets.

Last week, Nokia Corp sued Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, for breach of contract in Britain, the United States and Canada over cellular patents the two companies agreed on nine years ago.

The struggling Finnish cellphone maker said that it agreed with RIM in 2003 on a "cross-license for standards-essential cellular patents," amended in 2008.

RIM has since claimed the license should also have covered patents for non-essential parts and it filed arbitration proceedings with the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce in March 2011.

Nokia said it had made the filings earlier this week to enforce the tribunal's ruling, which says that the Canadian company is "not entitled to manufacture or sell products compatible with the WLAN Standard without first agreeing with Nokia on the royalty to be paid."

Source : ET BUREAU