Nortel's carcass is in high demand
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.