In his Keilaniemi fourth floor open office, Siilasmaa quickly started to question the strategy which he had started to develop. What could be done differently? What could we give up? Were there other possibilities with smartphones than Microsoft? The focused strategy work began at the latest in the previous summer, when Microsoft announced its Surface tablet. It stepped on the toes of the computer manufacturers who used Microsoft software. If this happened with computers, anything could be ahead with phones, the reasoning went. Especially now that Microsoft had brought forward hardware manufacture in their strategy.

Nokia’s board started thinking about scenarios. What will happen when Microsoft does this? How will it affect us and Google? What if Microsoft really does that? Or if Google’s next move is this, how can we add possibilities for us to succeed? Should we sell NSN so we could buy more time for Lumia? Could we find companies to buy? Could we sell Navteq? What about patents — could we get money from them to alleviate the cash flow crisis? The work included the unbiased evaluation of the Nokia-Microsoft agreement, and the possibility of changing it with negotiations.

Android was on the table continuously. It was installed in Nokia devices, and was proven to work acceptably. But would the coffers withstand the loss of the Microsoft support payment and the penalty payments of breaking the contract? And the employees, with starting over again with a new platform from scratch?

The analysis, which lasted many months, has been described as being so thorough that afterward, nothing could come as a surprise.

Materials for the extraordinary general meeting, where the decision to sell the phones business to Microsoft was taken, contain a detailed description of how the negotiations which led to the sale started and how they proceeded. The text has gone through a thick column of lawyers, so its truthfulness is credible. Nokia would hardly have taken a risk that the decision to sell would be seen to be based on mistakes in the materials for the meeting. Also, reporter Ina Fried had given such a detailed explanation on the website AllThingsD, that the source would have to have been Ballmer, Siilasmaa or both. Siilasmaa clearly wanted to downplay the allegations that the deal was done by Elop.

In February 2013, Ballmer called Siilasmaa and expressed his concern with three words: “Can we talk?” Ballmer called, even though he knew that evening was turning to night in Finland. For him, it was morning. The time zones of Seattle and Finland cross in such a way that work is never done during the same normal work time. During the five minute call, the two agreed to meet soon at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress. The topic was set as “strategic partnership”.

Now would be a good time to pause for a moment. Siilasmaa was the chairman of the board and Ballmer was the CEO. Why did Ballmer contact Siilasmaa and not the current chairman, Bill Gates? Was Nokia considered a second rate target?

Siilasmaa has never commented about this mismatch. The normal practice would have been to approach the CEO, when feeling out the possible sales of a business unit and not the whole business. Siilasmaa probably understood from the beginning that Ballmer was wise enough to avoid hygiene problems. Had he directly approached his counterpart Elop, it would have seemed suspicious, due to their common background. On the other hand, the roles of chairmen of the board in the two companies were different. Siilasmaa worked full time. Gates had already been concentrating on his namesake foundation and on his family, and had withdrawn from practical leadership.

Siilasmaa accepted the invitation without becoming offended because of the circumstances. Before the meeting, both of them reviewed what was working well in their partnership and what was not.

The two of them talked for an hour in hotel Rey Juan Carlos, named after the Spanish king. The options were combed through without prejudice. The option of terminating the participation was accorded the same foreground status as the option of deepening it. Ballmer put the basic arrangement on the table, that Microsoft had to get more money from each phone that was sold. If Microsoft put $20 into marketing each Windows Phone device, then a return of $10 was too little. According to Ballmer, marketing money was used ineffectively for two brands — Lumia and Windows Phone. Software engineers were doing double work. In other areas, the cooperation was hitting bumps. The work would proceed better if the phone manufacture was transferred completely to Microsoft, Ballmer estimated.

Microsoft really became concerned about Nokia’s financial situation. There was good reason to be afraid that Nokia would jump ship over to Android.

Siilasmaa announced that Nokia did not have any intention of selling. Should it further be examined what could be done with the cooperation?

This announcement put a train in motion that almost derailed many times, often went in strange directions, required a lot of luck, and eight months later, led to one of the most dramatic acquisitions in Finnish business history. The first step was evaluating the state of the cooperation, which Siilasmaa had demanded before agreeing to concrete discussions. Nokia used a lot of time, for example, to study how things looked from Microsoft’s perspective. The board also agreed that Siilasmaa would handle the negotiations. Elop would have been unsuitable for the job, due to his Microsoft background.

The negotiations could very well lead to a corporate restructuring, according to a source from the board, therefore Nokia started scanning for options outside of Microsoft. For a few months, they considered whether to keep going in the same direction, or try to change the agreement with Microsoft. Should a new platform be adopted for smartphones? Is it better to sell the entire mobile phone business or only part? Should the location services business HERE be sold? Completely or partially?

Already in the early stages of the evaluation, Nokia decided that it would be good to start negotiations with Microsoft. The first meeting was, as agreed, a month after the Barcelona Mobile World Congress, at the end of March, 2013. At the end of April, the parties met in the premises of Nokia’s legal office in New York. Nokia was represented by Siilasmaa and Elop, who as a member of the board and CEO, was present in the process, along with Louise Pentland and Timo Ihamuotila. On the other side of the table sat Ballmer, along with Terry Myerson, who had transferred to head of the Windows Phone unit, Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith.

When the discussion got going, Microsoft opened the game. They started talking about purchase offers. When Nokia heard the proposals, they withdrew to prepare an answer.

When they met back together, Siilasmaa made a ten minute speech, where he calmly and politely explained that the parties’ price evaluation of the phone business are from different planets. Ballmer answered that it was good to know where we were going. A new meeting was considered unnecessary.

The initiative, which came to be known as Project Gold Medal — Microsoft used the name Edwin Moses, Nokia the name Paavo Nurmi — was made of tougher stuff than the gentlemen had imagined.

On the following morning, Siilasmaa sent Ballmer a text message and suggested that the companies explore whether or not the analysis should be continued. Maybe the topic of money came up too soon. Perhaps Microsoft had lacked knowledge of the many parts of Nokia and did not understand their value. Perhaps the companies were closer to each other than they realized.

A series of telephone negotiations followed. It led to a meeting at Microsoft’s legal office in London in May, 2013. AllThingsD describes the dramatic events on the evening of the 24th. The groups from Nokia and Microsoft were the only ones in the building. The parties were on different sides of the floor considering tactics, when the building shook with a huge roar. A roar so huge that it could have only come from the huge lungs of the Microsoft CEO. The Nokia team was startled, and guessed that Ballmer had reacted to their proposal differently than how they had hoped for. In the Microsoft room, they were wondering what was happening because Ballmer had left the room just a moment prior.

After a moment, they heard a person running, which added to the restlessness. Gradually, it became clear that Ballmer had not noticed the glass coffee table and had tripped. He had hit his head and gotten a knot on his forehead. Myerson sent the Nokians a text message and explained what had happened. Even as he was being fixed up, Ballmer continued the negotiations with Siilasmaa and Elop. At the end of the evening the group went for dinner, where Ballmer arrived with his head wrapped in a bandage.

The next morning, the coffee table had been moved to the middle of the floor’s lounge area beside the window, and by afternoon, it had been removed completely.

Nokia’s map services Navteq, which had gotten the name HERE became a bone of contention in this discussion. Siilasmaa was unshakable. Here was mandatory for Nokia’s future. Ballmer was of the opinion that Microsoft could not succeed in the mobile world without control of the maps and navigation platform. On June 14, 2013 he flew to Finland, together with his Chief Legal Officer. This time, the flight went without any problems, and they met the Nokians at the Båtvik manor house in Kirkkonummi, which was owned by Nokia. The results were unimpressive. Nonetheless, they concluded that they wanted to continue negotiations.

During that time, Siilasmaa had gotten a special reason to continue the negotiations. Nokia had, after a long time, gotten a stroke of luck. Two major developments were coming together just at the right time. Siilasmaa came to know that the German Siemens’ share of their shared networks company, NSN, was up for sale. They felt extremely lucky that their negotiations had remained outside the eye of publicity. Siilasmaa and the CFO, Timo Ihamuotila, started to develop some downright brilliant business.

Siilasmaa notified Ballmer that Nokia had a list of prerequisites that have to be fulfilled before any serious negotiations about the sale of the phones could take place. The first one was a convertible bond. Nokia had to get it whether or not the sales of the phones business took place. The other involved the maps. HERE had to be taken off from the negotiation table. Nokia would keep it.

The partner figure skating began. Nokia was promised a convertible bond of 1.5 billion euros ($2.2 billion). Nokia now had money to buy Siemens out, without Microsoft being able to use that as leverage in the sales of the phones business. On the other hand, Siemens thought that Nokia had empty coffers, and agreed to make a payment plan for part of the sales price. The analysts had appraised the value of NSN at 6–9 billion euros ($8–12 billion). Nokia got half at 1.7 billion euros ($2.2 billion). The price probably would have risen had Siemens known that Nokia was getting money from Microsoft. The NSN deal was announced on July 1, 2013.

Nokia’s second stroke of luck occurred during 2009, when Nokia Siemens Networks had appointed Indian Rajeev Suri as CEO. Suri had trimmed the joint venture’s workforce with a heavy hand, and concentrated on mobile broadband, especially LTE technology. The company, which had been facing losses, recovered and so quickly turned profitable in 2012 that Nokia gave a positive profit warning. Because of Suri, Nokia was able to get its other support pillar in shape. The future could possibly be built on something other than phones.

Suri was born in 1967. He has a bachelor’s in electronics and communications engineering from the Mangalore University.

He came to work for Nokia in 1995 in Singapore. When Simon Beresford-Wylie transferred to head Nokia Networks in 2005, Suri moved to his place. Suri was later responsible for NSN’s services business activities and worked in India, Britain, West Africa, and Singapore.

Suri followed Beresford-Wylie to lead NSN, and moved from New Delhi to Finland in the fall of 2009. Suri is married and has two children. He is living in Finland once again. His family previously followed him, but now the two boys are studying, and his wife lives mainly in Singapore, where one of the boys is studying.

Suri’s goal has been to raise NSN to be the world’s second largest networks manufacturer after the Swedish Ericsson. The goal has remained just a dream. In 2013, Ericsson’s market share, according to the market research company Dell’Oro, was 36 percent. In second place was Chinese Huawei, which had 23 percent. NSN’s market share had shrunk to 17 percent. In the fourth place was Alcatel-Lucent at 13 percent. NSN’s profitability had nonetheless remained good. It concentrated on money-making projects at the cost of market share. NSN had, on average, 64,000 employees in 2012. Nokia had 48,000 in the other units.

According to a source from the board, in summer 2013, they arrived at the conclusion that Nokia had good reason to sell off the phones business completely. It would get the accounts in shape and get rid of the uncertain future of the nest of losses and would be able to build a nice support pillar, thanks to the NSN deal. The board was continuously active. They had meetings at a furious pace in 2013. The meetings added up to 34, and including the committee meetings, 60.

David J. Cord explains in his book that Nokia used the Huawei card during those times. According to Cord, Huawei and Lenovo expressed interest in buying Nokia, after Wall Street Journal had hinted that there were discussions underway. If Huawei was interested, it would have constituted a good weapon for Nokia, because Huawei might be interested in both phones and networks, because it was succeeding on both sides, and was targeting aggressive growth. When Nokia presented this possibility with Microsoft, the answer was blunt. Microsoft reminded them that they had 55 billion euros ($70 billion) as liquid cash. They had enough to buy any phone manufacturer, if things don’t work out with Nokia.

The breakthrough occurred at the end of July in New York. The maps question was solved. The deciding factor was that since it is a question of software, the source code could be shared. The intellectual property rights would stay with Nokia, but Microsoft would get a special license which gave it equal rights with Nokia to modify the map services, and permission to do with the source code as it pleased. The road opened. After the meeting, Siilasmaa and Ballmer shook hands. A PowerPoint presentation with the main points had been collected together, which would be fleshed out.

During the following weeks, the lawyers created contracts from the PowerPoint presentation, and the companies started a due diligence process, where they would check the points of the deal. The date for sealing the deal was agreed to be September 3, 2013. The business sale would become very demanding. From Microsoft’s perspective, it could only succeed if the company cultures were suitably close to each other. The decision to buy could be interpreted that, in Microsoft’s opinion, the cooperation had gone well.

In a few interviews, Siilasmaa and Ihamuotila were congratulated that they succeeded in selling the feature phones in the same package with the smartphones. It is true that Microsoft expressed interest in buying only the smartphones, and that was what they were primarily interested in. The negotiators quite quickly concluded that the parts could not be separated. They had so much in common, among other things sales, logistics and management, that separating them would have given birth to two lame ducks.

On the first Sunday of September, Ballmer finally flew to Finland, and on Monday the deal was finalized and the papers were signed. Risto Siilasmaa called Jorma Ollila and the Finnish prime minister Jyrki Katainen that evening to convey the news. Nokia employees got news the next morning via text message, and after a few moments, the morning TV was able to report their news.

The press conference was called together at Dipoli in Espoo at 11:00. Siilasmaa took 9 minutes to tell how the decision was the most demanding and complicated in his life. He described it as rationally correct, but emotionally difficult. Nokia’s board had gone through all the options, and had come to the conclusion that the deal was in the best interest of Nokia shareholders.

Next, Ballmer stepped up on stage. He concentrated on calming the Finns. Siilasmaa had obviously told him that how Microsoft is viewed in Finland is important for the continuation of the phones business. Microsoft would start a data center in Finland and invest at least 190 million euros ($250 million) in it. Microsoft promised to be a good corporate citizen in Finland, and assured that the development of mobile phones would continue in Finland. According to Ballmer, the deal was a win-win. The time it took for him to say all this was five minutes.

After the details from Siilasmaa and Ihamuotila had been handled, Siilasmaa invited Elop up on stage. Elop waited a short moment, and climbed the few steps onto the stage with familiarity, and started.

His expression was serious. One could see in his face that he was troubled. Instead of waving around, his hands stayed at his sides or clasped in front of his stomach. The presentation was colorless and subdued, even if the content was supposed to appeal to people’s emotions. According to Elop, Nokians had every reason to be proud of their work and achievements. He told them that he was proud of them, even if he was frustrated at being left behind in market share by the competitors. He said he was also sad, because the word Nokia in its former form had meant so much to so many people.

Finally, Elop addressed the people of Finland. The pride felt by Finns toward Nokia has been an inspiration to him and a source of strength. He thanked the people for the support he had. Now a new chapter was beginning in Nokia’s life, according to him. Some things would still not change. “As you see the bright yellow Lumias in peoples’ hands overseas, continue to be proud. The phone is still made by your friend, colleague, or even family member. We will stay in Finland to win.”

Ballmer didn’t want to stay and answer the questions from reporters. Ihamuotila, Siilasmaa, and Elop stood up in a row. Elop stood next to Siilasmaa like an ice hockey coach that had just lost his game. It seems his hands had difficulties finding a place. One’s attention shifted to the sleeves on his suit, which were too long. He was a defeated man.

The winners stood next to him. Siilasmaa’s radical decision garnered thanks where it was important. The share price had risen over 40 percent, even if many thought the sales price was too cheap. Nokia had become a real company. One whose cash flow was transparent, which was predictable, and whose future looked bright and with whom one could expect new business.

One representative from a large shareholder was satisfied with the result. “We had high expectations for Siilasmaa, and they were fulfilled. His board met unbelievably often. The alpha and omega of everything was that Siilasmaa could use his time for Nokia. From our point of view, Siilasmaa is the hero of this story.”