Admittedly, acquisitions are difficult to make given you need to find the find technology and the right team at the right place.
But why can’t Nortel, which desperately needs a strategic spark of any kind, acquire a start-up(s) with exciting prospects that would give people a sense that senior management has a vision of the future that it’s willing to pursue by picking up some promising technology.
Here’s an example (and by no means am I advocating that this is an M&A target for Nortel). Aquantia just raised $25-million in venture capital to bolster development of ethernet chips, which process 10-gigabit Ethernet signals – a good thing given the increasing amount of traffic.
This is just example of a start-up with interesting technology. The question is whether Nortel has any appetite for these kind of opportunities. With M&A specialist George Riedel on board, Nortel has someone with deal-making experience yet almost nothing has happened on the M&A front.
That is a great idea. Nortel can use Monopoly money and some Nortel Monopoly shares. If Nortel is going to do this, they had better hurry. Next week they will have to use 20% more Nortel Monopoly shares than this week.
I am beginning to wonder if Nortel can ever recover.
sad sad day for nortel
I don't know how customers can continue buying mediocre Nortel soft switches. You have incompetant project managers, incompentant network engineers, especially on the enterprise carrier soft switch. They can't or don't want to follow their own engineering bulletins, the military would be better off buying sonus or cisco products. I've lost all confidence in the support engineers, they are lost, because their own people give them mis-information. The whole 5'9's montra is laughable.
NewBlue
Why can't Nortel make something good?
Admittedly, making a determination on where the market is going to be in 5 or 10 years is difficult to do given the rapid pace of growth in the telecomm industry.
But why can't our PLMs, managers, and HW and SW architects design solutions that are easily scalable as well as functionally extensible, using off-the-shelf technology in those areas where we don't need to excel? For example, why can't we build products that provide field-upgradable CPU complexes and object-loadable SW components, where the core image doesn't require a complete rebuild? It's not rocket science; it's not even advanced computer science.
We should engineer and supply the HW fast data path and the value-add service features, and let the CPU and switch vendors provide us with the HW platforms to execute from.
protosphere
Nortel doesn't exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to acquisitions, More to the point, jinxed or plagued comes to mind.
Now they have increasingly less money by the day to buy anything. Their share price today reached 58 cents presplit! Cash is further declining this year even after having exhausted so many assets and printed billions in paper to maintain revenues they pay dearly for, losing money, big money, and fast.
Perhaps they run the fear that even a small company might embarrass them by saying no thanks like Force10 did.
I believe the moral majority wants nothing to do with them /customers /shareholders /anyone with ethics or integrity. That's almost everyone even if they did have anything to sell. Why should anyone want to be bought by these guys to ruin their business. Part of anything untrustworthy with endless contradictions.
Management has astoundingly questionable conduct with past employers and criminal road rage incidents that horrify even their existing good employees they fire or cut benefits while under EDC welfare exporting jobs. They hypes with endless contradiction like 20 buck buying opportunities? They claimed to work in the interests of the employees and shareholders but they are departing. Who wants anything to do with them.
Numbers worse every time counted, bonusgate denials, so many still there, fraud charges, etc.,…what would they merge with? An honest growing company?
I think this was the largest mass orchestrated fraud with so many still there, perhaps highlighted by post ultimatum revisions for future periods. and how profit was posted on declined shares. The way they still post profits seems to be a religion there or should I say cult, most recently to exchange rates. This quarter they want 20% more. Everyone was in on this grab all the way down the line. No profit, no bonuses. . So many lives ruined to fraud /lies for criminal theft /greed yet they maintain exorbitant pay practices and contradiction with $20 buying opportunities to entice more pain. There is no dollar value on some things.
Who would say all sins forgiven, buy us or lets merge with you, we trust you? I don't think so. I think the worse is yet to come and it is already too late to make any acquisitions for them. I think the moral majority wants nothing to do with them anyway and this is reflected by this and by their stock price.
Observer
This is a bad market to do acquisitions. We have much further to fall across the board. If I was approached by Nortel for an acquistion I would first to go Cisco and ask for the same deal. The problem is Nortel can't compete even in acquisitons against Cisco because they have no leverage as a company.
asteryx
The right question to ask is why should Nortel do an acquisition? and which one?
Is there a company, attractively priced, that would add enough growth to NT that it would improve its top & bottom line in the near term? I can understand investment bankers and stock brokers wanting companies to buy each other and pay them fees but sometimes the best strategic decision is not to follow the Street's advice. I believe that some Alcatel's shareholders wish now they had not merged with LU.
asteryx
The right question to ask is why should Nortel do an acquisition? and which one?
Is there a company, attractively priced, that would add enough growth to NT that it would improve its top & bottom line in the near term? I can understand investment bankers and stock brokers wanting companies to buy each other and pay them fees but sometimes the best strategic decision is not to follow the Street's advice. I believe that some Alcatel's shareholders wish now they had not merged with LU.
Why Can’t Nortel Buy Something Cool?
Admittedly, acquisitions are difficult to make given you need to find the find technology and the right team at the right place.
But why can’t Nortel, which desperately needs a strategic spark of any kind, acquire a start-up(s) with exciting prospects that would give people a sense that senior management has a vision of the future that it’s willing to pursue by picking up some promising technology.
Here’s an example (and by no means am I advocating that this is an M&A target for Nortel). Aquantia just raised $25-million in venture capital to bolster development of ethernet chips, which process 10-gigabit Ethernet signals – a good thing given the increasing amount of traffic.
This is just example of a start-up with interesting technology. The question is whether Nortel has any appetite for these kind of opportunities. With M&A specialist George Riedel on board, Nortel has someone with deal-making experience yet almost nothing has happened on the M&A front.
It’s strikes me as a strategically puzzling.