Stefan Mileschin

Lenovo has denied rumours that it is thinking of buying the troubled phone company Nokia and the company's Gianfranco Lanci dismissed the rumours as a "joke".

The markets actually thought it was a good idea and shares in Nokia rose as much as 17 percent in heavy volumes on market talk that Lenovo may be interested.

But the shares fell after Lanci said to Reuters "this must be a joke".

Lanci, who runs Lenovo's operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa, said that there was nothing going on and he should know.

Nokia's shares have dropped more than 70 percent over the last few months and the word on the street is that someone will have to take it over.

The company is still worth €7.21 billion which means it would still be a cost and a risky buy.

With the wisdom of hindsight, one analyst pointed out that Lenovo would have been spending so much money buying something that is not really its core business.

Lenovo has a market capitalisation of $7.1 billion and it has more than $3.8 billion stored in cash in its bank account, and down the back of the sofa.

Although Nokia reported a steep loss for the April-June quarter, it did not chew though its cash as quickly as analysts had feared. This means that that the worst might soon be over for the company and if the Windows thing takes off, it might actually make a buck or two.

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