Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Nortel's carcass is in high demand

By | July 22, 2009, 9:12am PDT

Who would have thought Nortel would be more popular in bankruptcy than as a going concern? A lot of companies want Nortel’s assets, which have the potential to raise a ruckus in the tech market.

Emerging signs of Nortel’s popularity:

Avaya plans to pay $475 million for Nortel’s enterprise solutions business. Under a deal announced Monday Avaya entered an agreement to buy Nortel’s enterprise unit, which includes enterprise telephony, unified communications and data networking products. With the move Avaya could be a bigger threat to Cisco.

The Avaya deal comes about a month after Nortel entered an agreement to sell its CDMA and Long Term Evolution (LTE) access business to Nokia Siemens Networks. That deal, worth $650 million, would transfer at least 2,500 Nortel workers to Nokia Siemens. Under the deal, Nokia Siemens entered a “stalking horse” arrangement where Nortel can complete the sale in bankruptcy unless a better deal comes along.

And speaking of better deals. Research in Motion freaked out because it was prevented from making an offer for Nortel’s wireless business, which will officially be auctioned July 24. Nortel is selling its CDMA and Long Term Evolution (LTE) access business.

In a statement, RIM said it was told it qualified as a bidder only if it promised not to bid for other Nortel assets for a year. RIM said its bid would have kept the wireless business in Canada—a condition of the bankruptcy proceedings. RIM said:

Based on its preliminary review, RIM would be prepared to pay in the range of US $1.1 billion, subject to due diligence and the entering into of appropriate ancillary agreements, for the CDMA and Long Term Evolution Access businesses and certain other Nortel assets. RIM believes that such an offer would result in an extremely attractive price for Nortel creditors and value substantially in excess of the stalking horse bid made by Nokia Siemens Networks.

Simply put, Nortel may disappear, but its assets will continue to make noise going forward.

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Nortel's carcass is in high demand
makrekwe22-24353592616043023999354151110553 Updated - 6th Nov
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us 20k for our nortel systems.

I love capitolism.. when the weak die, the strong eat them. This is how our financial and motor markets should have been treated.... but alas.. they were special( monetary supporters ).

Maybe we should raise their interest rates through the roof and tack on penalty fees for not receiving notices we didnt send.
0 Votes
+ -
What a sad joke
rahbm 24th Jul 2009
Nortel paid $11 billion for Bay Networks in 1998. Now Avaya
has offered $475 million for what is left of the enterprise
networking business - and I suspect that is a fairly generous
offer.

Nortel wound up or disposed of most of the money-making
parts of Bay, and ran the rest into the ground. This would
have to rate as one of the worst managed companies in
recent history. What a waste!
0 Votes
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List of Executives
TWBurger 14th Sep 2009
I'm thinking of creating a Web site listing every senior member of Nortel, what they did (or did not do) to bring it down, and a picture of each of them so they never get a job in a publicly traded company, or handle money and budgets, again.
0 Votes
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RE: Nortel's carcass is in high demand
rossdav@... 5th Apr 2011
@TWBurger
You guys rock! Do it!
0 Votes
+ -
The only constant is...
bernalillo 14th Sep 2009
Bell - Att - Lucent - Avaya
Rolm - IBM - Siemens
Northern Telecom - Nortel - Avaya
ATT - Comdial - GTE - Siemens
Iwatzu - defunct (I think)
Mitel - still Mitel go figure...
Intertel - Mitel

not to mention the wireless and LD changes.

Telecom is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upwards.
0 Votes
+ -
Still stunned!
bmateus@... 15th Sep 2009
I'm still stunned why Nortel's, with such good products, have fallen down.

I mean, their products we're expensive, but well worth the money, as their quality was amazing. I still have a "not so small" network running over Nortel's gateways and switches, and even the phonecentral (including voip), all is from Nortel. And it NEVER let me down!

I simply feel like they've been ripped'off by their own managers! It must have been! Good products like theirs reinforce companies, not the other way around.

Of course, this is my own opinion.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: Nortel's carcass is in high demand
makrekwe22-24353592616043023999354151110553 Updated - 6th Nov
I patriot jerseys truly appreciated looking out with the help of new england patriots jerseys the article. Great move made by pedal examinationpatriots jerseys !

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