In early summer, the Finnish company Nokia announced that it had entered into an agreement with a private foundations to sell its division, which produces the prestigious Vertu phones. Experts estimate the brand's share in the elite segment of the market at 60%, with the average price of the original device of this brand being about € 5,000. The cost of the entire enterprise, according to Bloomberg, reaches € 200 million.
Vertu Ltd was founded in 1998 by Nokia's lead designer, Frank Nuovo. 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 product - mobile phones - continues to grow by at least 10% every year. This is mainly due to sales of "status" products in Russia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The parent company Nokia, on the other hand, did much worse during these years - it was 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 based in its headquarters in Stockholm and subsidiary offices in Europe, USA and Asia. This private investment and venture capital company invests in transactions related to the change in the composition of the owners of medium and large enterprises, their re-profiling, restructuring, buyout of debt obligations, etc. Typically, the company does not act directly, but uses 14 stand-alone funds, such as the EQT VI, which is involved in the Vertu deal. Some of these funds are part of other, larger structures. The Swedish company is interested in transactions with enterprises operating in Eastern and Northern Europe, the United States, China, if their volume exceeds € 50 million. By financing them, the company creates its own investment portfolio from the shares of enterprises, on the boards of which EQT Partners AB delegates its own representatives or receives a controlling package.
The deal still needs to be approved by the European antimonopoly authority, after which Nokia will have only 10% of the company's assets. Representatives of EQT Partners in the press said that through EQT VI they intend to fund the development of new Vertu products, expansion of the retail sales network and marketing. Experts believe that the change of ownership will benefit the luxury brand.
