All About Nortel

Sometimes you wonder if Nortel can't win for trying. The company manages to convince itself its 2005 financial results are ready for public consumption (a positive development), then goes and releases them late in the day on Friday after everyone's headed home for the weekend. (a negative development). From an optics perspective, it gives the [...]

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Poor Frank Dunn. He wants to avoid testifying before the Ontario Securities Commission because he's afraid OSC will turn over his information to the SEC. Earlier this week, Justice Colin Campbel rejected Dunn's request to avoid answering questioning about Nortel's accounting problems. We'll see you in court, Frank.

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Does it surprise anyone that Nortel decided to issue its fourth-quarter results on Friday long after the markets closed? It's a class P.R./I.R. technique to avoid getting media coverage. In any event, the company said it lost $2.6-billion last yea (including $2.5-billlion make a couple pesky class-action lawsuits go away), compared with a $207-million loss [...]

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If Mike Zafirovski is considering a major deal, his bargaining power with Siemens was given a big boost when the German  conglomerate unveiled plans to chop 1,000 jobs (administration, sales and development) at its communications division due to lower than expected profits. "The job cuts are unavoidable as Siemens is required to reach cost positions [...]

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So does Nortel pursue a deal with Siemens to create a $25-billion global powerhouse? Or does Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski continue to focus on fixing the company before he even considers a mega-merger? Check out today's National Post on why Siemens make sense.

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There's an outfit called BDR Inc. (a.ka. webuynortelshares.com) that is offering to purchase Nortel shares privately "at a substantial premium". Describing themselves as "a duly registered Ontario, Canada Corp." and "an agent for a loss recovery program", they require information such as how many shares you own and your average price per share. My advice: [...]

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After being forced into retirement by Nortel, Bill Owens seems as busy as ever. He has joined U.S. private equity firm AEA Holdings and leading their expansion into China and India. Owens is clearly bullish about India given his willingness to have Nortel take on a money-losing wireless contract with BSNL.Owens will move to Hong [...]

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 Lucent did Nortel no favours today when it suggested a slow ramp-up in customer spending will prompt it to lower its fiscal 2006 guidance to "down year over year", compared with earlier guidance of "flat to up in the low single digits". Lucent blamed delays with 3G in China and modest rev. A and UMTS [...]

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As much as coverage of Nortel is focused on its ongoing acccounting woes and overhauled senior management team, the company's technology portfolio is receiving little attention - probably for good reason given it hasn't been a corporate focus for the past two or three years. One product, however, that has done extremely well is the [...]

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Nortel's partnership (and small equity stake) with Avici hasn't worked out that well in recent years as both companies have badly struggled. But maybe there's some hope for the marriage after Avici posted better-than-expected first-quarter results and raised its revenue guidance 2006 by 50%. A big chunk of Avici's success - $21.1-million in revenue - [...]

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