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Nokia Corp. said on Wednesday that it had agreed to sell and lease back its head office building in Espoo, Finland on a long-term lease to Finland-based Exilion. Nokia Expects expect to complete the sale by the end of 2012. The selling price is €170 million ($222 million), which is considerably below the originally projected price between €200 and €300 million.
The glass and steel Nokia House building by the Gulf of Finland was constructed in 1995 – 2000 timeframe. The building is 48 000m2 large and still houses a lot of crucial business operations of Nokia.
"We had a comprehensive sales process with both Finnish and foreign investors and we are very pleased with this outcome. As we have said before, 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. We are naturally continuing to operate in our head office building on a long-term basis," said Timo Ihamuotila, chief financial officer or Nokia.
In the last one and half years Nokia laid off tens of thousands of employees, closed-down manufacturing facilities, which once helped the company to become the dominating force on the market of cell phones, and cancelled development of many projects. With this on the background, the company announced plans to sell-off certain assets. As it appears, the legendary group of buildings in Espoo, Finland, is not a core-asset anymore.
