Stefan Mileschin

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, who deepened the former rubber boot maker's ties to Microsoft, is set to have a huge payout for effectively moving his desk to Redmond.

According to official filings from Nokia, now that Microsoft is buying full control of the company's mobile business for $7.2 billion, Elop will collect $25.5 million as he prepares to leave the company and rejoin Microsoft.

The New York Times said that the payment would be composed of €4.1 million in salary and management incentives, €100,000 in benefits and stock awards valued at about €14.6 million euros. About 70 percent of Elop's golden handshake will be covered by Microsoft, with Nokia responsible for the rest.

This is not bad when you consider that Nokia already paid Elop $6.2 million to go to Nokia from Microsoft in the first place.

In three years, Elop took the controversial move of committing to Microsoft's phone software as both companies fought to gain traction in the smartphone sector.

Nokia steadily lost ground to a wave of phones running Google's Android as well as Apple's iPhone.

It's claimed Elop had nothing to do with the Microsoft negotiations, with him standing aside as the talks were conducted by Nokia chairman, Risto K. Siilasmaa.

Elop will leave Nokia and become the head of Microsoft's handset business once the deal closes. To avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, he gave up the title of chief executive and became executive vice president for devices and services.

http://news.techeye.net/business/ste...-move-his-desk