Nokia investors who called for the dismissal of CEO Stephen Elop and demanded that MeeGo should be Nokia’s primary OS have decided not to carry through with their agenda.
The anonymous group of investors were unhappy with Nokia’s new strategic direction, which sidelined Symbian, made MeeGo an open source platform and made Windows Phone 7 Nokia’s primary mobile OS.
Under the title ‘Nokia Plan B’, they originally called for the dismissal of Elop and a restructure of the Microsoft alliance. They also wanted to make MeeGo Nokia’s primary smartphone OS and to increase Symbian’s life span for another five years.
However, they have now decided not to carry on with this plan.
“Kids on the board”
While they said they received support from hundreds of individual shareholders, responses from institutional investors were not as encouraging.
Due to these institutions’ fiduciary responsibility to their customers, they were legally barred from supporting radical initiatives.
The group members identified themselves as being made up of nine young shareholders and they acknowledged that institutional investors could not legally support sitting “a bunch of kids on the board”, such as themselves.
The group also realised that by the time Nokia Plan B was implemented, most of the company’s remaining software staff would have left, making the plan much more difficult to implement.
The group recommended that shareholders divest in Nokia if they don’t agree with its new direction and put their money in a company that fits their own investment strategy.
