Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg has been compelled to publicly rule out a merger with Cisco as market rumours swirled following the announcement of their cooperative technology partnership last week.

In a statement, Vestberg said there weren’t “any discussions whatsoever” about a merger with, or acquisition by, Cisco.  “We note that there are rumours in the market regarding an acquisition of Ericsson by Cisco possibly spurred by the recent announcement of a partnership between our two companies.”

“The talks leading up to the partnership announcement have been ongoing for a year and there have not been any discussions whatsoever on a merger or an acquisition.”

Sweden’s financial paper Dagens Industri had said that Cisco wants to buy Ericsson, and claimed that the latter would have little chance defending itself against such a bid.

The companies announced last week a partnership for collaboration on the future development of networks, a move they claimed could deliver incremental revenues of US$1 billion or more for each company by 2018. The partnership will focus on the joint development of products, services and technology spanning enterprise mobility, cloud-delivered IP services and the Internet of Things.

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