Telia—a Swedish‐Finnish marriage after a failed Norwegian courtship

AbstractIn 2002, the Swedish telecommunications company Telia merged with the Finnish telecommunications company Sonera. Prior to this merger, Telia had already attempted to ally with the Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor. This effort had resulted in a disaster; the “marriage” of the two companies was “divorced” after only two months in 1999. In the first part, the case study will feature an introduction to the telecommunications industry. In the second part, the unsuccessful merger between Telia and Telenor will be examined. Particular emphasis will be placed on national conflicts of interest and the power games played by politicians and leading managers. In the third part, the merger between Telia and Sonera will be described. This will be interpreted as another example of a politically and culturally difficult, but to this day successful merger. Finally, both merger episodes will be analyzed with reference to international mergerand‐acquisition (M&A) literature. The focus will be on motivations and objectives, environmental influences on the two mergers, and internal issues of the merging companies. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.