Recruiting in China

Shareholders of Finnish telecommunication company Nokia approved the acquisition of French-American rival Alcatel-Lucent at an extraordinary general meeting in Helsinki on Tuesday.

Nokia said that the transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2016.

With the acquisition, the Helsinki-based company hopes to expand from telecom networks to Internet networks and "cloud" services to better compete with its global rivals.

"Nokia's shareholders have today shown the full extent of their support for our proposed combination with Alcatel-Lucent. By ratifying the transaction in such great numbers, they have endorsed our strongly-held belief that the combined company will be better positioned to compete as a world leader in network technologies over the long-term," said Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman of the Nokia Board of Directors.

In April, Nokia confirmed that it was negotiating a takeover of Alcatel-Lucent. The two companies have entered into a memorandum of understanding, under which Nokia will make an offer for all the shares issued by Alcatel-Lucent through a public exchange offer in France and in the United States. The total price of acquisition is 15.6 billion euros (about 16.5 billion U.S. dollars).

Under the terms of the agreement, the name of the combined company will be "Nokia", its headquarters will remain in Finland. Nokia will hold 66.5 percent stake in the new company, Alcatel-Lucent will hold the remaining 33.5 percent stake.

Currently, Nokia ranked the third largest network equipment manufacturer after Ericsson of Sweden and China's Huawei. Following the sale of its mobile phone business to Microsoft, Nokia focus on telecommunications infrastructure and mapping services.