Is there any large acquisition that succeeded in the last 10 years?
You might have the wrong criteria for acquisition success. I'm sure both Nokia and MS knew these layoffs would come before they agreed to the purchase.
If that was the case, do you think most of the Nokia employees were actively looking for another job and were just riding the gravy train until it finally pulled into the station?
I would think if I worked at Nokia and we were acquired by Microsoft, I'd probably be looking for another job fairly quickly. Considering the writing was on the wall for a while even before they were acquired by MS.
That will largely depend on the severance packages.
Those who stuck around through the merger and take take the first-round cuts offer will likely make out pretty well. Unfortunately for Microsoft, this means that they're largely paying for people with good strategic skills and a high capacity to find work elsewhere to leave.
It's the ones who stay put, largely out of lack of strategic skills and/or alternative options, who are going to be less valuable to the company. There may be further incentives but they're likely to not be as generous.
If they weren't before, they will be now that Microsoft's layoffs over the next six months hang over everyone's heads. Microsoft should have ripped the bandaid off in one quick move so other employees will feel secure.
Did MS? Including the cost of the lay off ($1.6b says Recode), Nokia price was actually $8.8b. What was their business case that was so easily scrapped just months into the purchase?
It may be successful on a tax/accounting perspective since the purchase was made in € with cash that couldn't be brought to the US.
Yet this does look like a gigantic waste of assets. Warren Buffett says that a successful business is all about mindfully allocating its resources. This looks like the oppsite - no wonder that Nadella has a hard time explaining what happens in simple words.
Adding layoff costs to the purchase price doesn't seem right. Severance is the bulk of it, and that's money you would have paid anyway if you had kept the employees on.
There's no evidence that the initial case for the acquisition was scrapped. On the contrary, it's almost a given that MS was aware of the post-deal costs. This is all quite normal for M&A deals.
Don't underestimate the value of the Nokia brand. Until recently, IIRC, Nokia was the world's largest seller of mobile phones. That brand image is worth a ton to help MS sell its phones.
You might have the wrong criteria for acquisition success. I'm sure both Nokia and MS knew these layoffs would come before they agreed to the purchase.