Cisco CEO on Nokia: Don’t confuse partnerships with M&A

Without naming it specifically, Cisco Systems Chief Executive Officer John Chambers dismissed recent apocryphal news reports of a rumor that the router giant was considering acquiring Finnish cell phone vendor Nokia.

“I was surprised by the credibility the market gave to recent rumors,” Chambers said during the company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call Tuesday afternoon, insisting that Cisco’s long-held acquisition strategy has not changed. The company prefers to acquire small, young companies with interesting technologies that share a similar corporate culture and geographic proximity with Cisco. As many analysts pointed out, that strategy is entirely inconsistent with the idea of acquiring a large, foreign vendor like Nokia.

“To do [an acquisition] halfway around the world or across the country of anywhere near [Cisco’s] size is not something we know how to do well,” he said.

Chambers further cautioned listeners not to confuse strategic partnerships with merger-and-acquisition talks. “People may get confused,” he said. “Sometimes you talk to people about strategic partnerships, and that can overflow, and people get carried away.”

The Nokia rumor spread quickly across U.S. news media, including Reuters, after a British newspaper reported it on Sunday.