Nokia’s Treasurer is their new board member at HMD Global, the maker of Nokia phones

Ever since its inception, HMD Global had a representative from Nokia on its board of directors. After all, Nokia has been since the start a strategic partner and from last year, also an investor in HMD owning over 10% of shares of the Finnish startup. Earlier this year, Nokia’s representative on the board Barry French was replaced by Janne Laakso, but recently a new successor appeared taking the place on HMD’s Board of Directors.

The new board member is Jari Relander, who is also “Finance & Tax and Group Treasurer of Nokia”, reporting to Nokia Chief Financial Officer. Jari joined Nokia in 2000 and has been the group’s Treasurer since 2011. “He is responsible for all treasury, tax, customer & trade finance and insurance & risk finance activities and teams as well as pension investments globally in Nokia.”

It’s interesting how Nokia’s representative at the board changed from a person with marketing background (CMO Barry French) to a more business person (Janne Laakso as Group Business Control and Performance Management VP) to a seemingly very important financial person at Nokia that holds the keys to funds.

How will this impact the decision Nokia Mobile makes, I don’t know. Considering we got the Nokia C01 Plus today, it will probably be business as usual.

Thanks Hiroshi for the tip. 🙂

Source: HMD Global About page