Four days after New York’s Eve, corks are popping once again at Nokia Corporation. The Finnish telecommunications giant this morning received the final regulatory authorization needed to complete its $17 billion takeover of French rival Alcatel-Lucent SA in a milestone that caps eight months of tedious bureaucratic wrangling. 

The approval of the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), France’s stock market watchdog, follows green lights from its U.S., European Union and Chinese counterparts. Nokia also managed to secure the blessings of Alcatel-Lucent’s investors despite heavy opposition from its second largest shareholder, which claimed that the value of the acquisition is too low. With all of that said and done, the company now boasts a roughly 80 percent stake in its former competitor.

Nokia will continue to buy up the remaining Alcatel-Lucent shares still trading on the stock market until surpassing the 95 percent ownership mark, at which point the remainder can be purchased without requiring the consent of any minority investors that may be holding out. However, the company doesn’t intend to wait for the deal to formally complete before proceeding with its plans.

Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent are set to begin operating as a combined entity exactly ten days from now. The first item on the agenda is a $7 billion financial restructuring initiative that will see $4.3 billion in excess capital returned to the Finnish carrier supplier’s shareholders as part of an effort to boost its stock price, which is down about 15 percent since the merger was announced last April. The company is also preparing to trim several divisions in an effort to shave $1 billion off its annual operating costs, a plan that likely includes significant layoffs.

But the newly bolstered Nokia will still remain a major force in the telecommunications industry after the cuts. The company hopes that the addition of Alcatel-Lucent’s tens of thousands of workers and vast intellectual-property portfolio will help tip the scales against its bigger rivals in the telecommunications sector, namely Cisco Systems Inc. and Ericsson. Similar reasoning lies behind’s  Dell Inc.’s historic $67 billion purchase of EMC Corp., which still faces several major regulatory hurdles including a potentially deal-breaking tax bill before completion.

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