Multiple senior executives at Nokia are heading for the exits prior to the formalization of CEO Pekka Lundmark’s company-wide restructuring. 

Marcus Weldon, CTO and president of Nokia Bell Labs, and Basil Alwan and Sri Reddy, co-presidents of the IP/Optical Networks unit at Nokia will be leaving the company soon. All three departures were first reported by TelecomTV.

Nokia, in a statement provided to SDxCentral, confirmed that Alwan and Reddy “have offered to stay for as long as necessary to ensure a smooth transition.” The spokesperson added: “There is a lot of mutual goodwill and respect, and we are currently working through the details.”

The Finnish vendor declined to comment on Weldon’s departure, but he confirmed the move in a tweet. “After 25 years, 11 as CTO and almost 8 as [president] of Bell Labs I have decided it is time to seek new pastures and hand the reins over with a peaceful transfer of power!” he wrote on Twitter. 

Nokia didn’t answer questions about the timeline for each executive’s exit or when replacements will be named, but the moves appear to be driven by Nokia’s corporate reshuffling.

“Nokia is moving to a new operating model, designed to better align with the needs of its customers. The new model, to be implemented on Jan. 1, 2021, will reduce complexity, improve cost-efficiency and drive accountability and transparency across the business,” the spokesperson said. 

“As part of the new operating model, we are also streamlining our group leadership team in order to best support the four new business groups. As a result, there is some evolution within the senior team and these changes are being worked through at an individual level,” the spokesperson added. 

Nokia said it will share more details about its restructuring plan on Dec. 16, and it plans to provide a long-term outlook during its annual investors event on March 18, 2021. Ludmark has some clean-up work to do, including decisive actions against complacency, as he described it during his first week on the job in August. 

His three-party strategy will kick off next month with a reorganization under four business groups: Mobile Networks, IP and Fixed Networks, Cloud and Network Services, and Nokia Technologies.

Lundmark admitted, during the company’s third-quarter 2020 earnings, that Nokia lost a major contract with Verizon barely a month before he took control of the company and that the company’s share of the global radio access network (RAN) market will erode in 2021 largely due to the loss at Verizon. 

“When I look ahead,” he said last month in a statement, “the good progress we have made is not enough. Our financial performance in 2021 is expected to be challenging, and more change is needed.”

The new CEO said Nokia will abandon “end-to-end as a core strategic idea” and the company “will invest whatever it takes to win in 5G,” but that doesn’t show up in the numbers, at least not yet. Nokia’s full-year capex for 2020 will hit $583.7 million, which marks a 9% decline from its previous guidance.

Analysts collectively yawned on some matters and scratched their head on others when Lundmark introduced the first phase of his restructuring plan last month. Those mixed reviews, as of now, don’t point to a clear and positive outcome for Nokia but most analysts are withholding stronger judgments until the vendor shares more details about its plans.