Symbian shareholders divvy up company as Nokia loses out

No IPO, just more engineers

Symbian has today announced it will be receiving a big cash injection from its handset vendor shareholders. Three of the six backers of the venture have all upped their stake in the company, leaving Nokia foiled in its efforts to become the majority shareholder.

When Psion in February announced it was selling its 31 per cent stake in Symbian Nokia had hoped to grab the lot but today's announcement saw four other vendors get some of the action.

As well as carving up Psion's share of Symbian, the smart-phone software company has agreed an additional rights issue of £50m to give it more capital to throw at developing its operating system.

Matsushita, Siemens and Sony Ericsson have all raised their holdings to varying degrees. Nokia has also increased its stake to continue as Symbian's largest shareholder – from 32.2 per cent of its equity to 47.9 per cent.

That Nokia now owns around half of Symbian does not make it the Finnish company's pet, according to Symbian CEO David Levin. He told silicon.com that the company's strategy is always dominated by its own interests. "It's Symbian's rationale, cooked up by Symbian," he said.

Nokia executive VP and chief strategy officer, Matti Alahuhta, downplayed the ownership issues, saying Nokia has been keen to get the other vendors involved. The phone manufacturer "encouraged shareholders to take part in this round of fundraising" and was happy with a "multi-company, broad ownership structure - that's what we have today", he said.

Nevertheless, it would appear the OS company has appointed someone to stop Nokia getting too big for its boots - Symbian has decided to appoint an independent non-executive chairman to its supervisory board. No candidate has yet been chosen but the search is on and is expected to be completed before the end of the year.

However, the other main player in Symbian's shares, Samsung, has reduced its stake, which is barely 18 months old. Levin said that the South Korean company had found the complexities of investing in an overseas company to be too complex.

The £50m cash injection from the rights issue will be spent on hiring 300 new employees and in furthering the adoption of Symbian's operating system, said Levin. The focus of the work will be on mid-range phones – an area analysts have marked out as a recent weakness in Nokia's portfolio.

The cash isn't, however, an indication of an IPO, said Levin. "The reason one has an IPO in any company is because shareholders want to sell or [the company] wants to raise capital… the reality is frankly we don't have a queue of people looking for the exit" and we have adequate capital too, he said.