Nokia seeks early nod to sell Chennai unit

October 14, 2014 11:45 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 04:02 pm IST - HELSINKI:

Nokia plant at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai

Nokia plant at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai

Finnish mobile manufacturer Nokia wants early permission to sell off its plant in Chennai and put the money from the deal in an escrow account till the time its tax dispute with the Indian government is resolved.

“We have said that if we are allowed to sell the factory, any money we get from the sale, we would put it in the escrow account. It won’t be ours. We would put it in a place until the tax dispute is resolved,” Barry French, Executive Vice-President (Marketing, Communications and Corporate Affairs), Nokia, told PTI in an interview here.

In a first comment by a top executive after Nokia’s last week’s decision to suspend operations at its mobile manufacturing unit near Chennai, Mr. French expressed concern over the status of the plant and its declining value.

“What is particularly crazy is that the value of the facility is going down literally every day,” he said.

“It would be in the interest of everybody that we get what value we can get from the amount,” he added. Nokia has announced suspension of operations at the Chennai plant, once the biggest facility of the company anywhere in the world, from November 1, which has thrown into uncertainty the future of about 1,100 employees now working there. “We will be happy to put the money into an escrow account, and try to find a buyer to get the jobs back. It is heartbreaking,” Mr. French said.

The Helsinki-based company was forced to keep the factory out of a $7.50-billion deal for sale of its handset business to Microsoft Corp, due to tax dispute with Indian authorities.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.