Mike Z. Snaps Up Some NT

By Mark Evans | Published: March 25, 2008

Got a tip from a reader (Thanks!) that Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski is putting his money where his mouth is by acquiring some more NT stock.

Earlier this week, he purchased 83,500 shares at prices range from $6.20 to $6.37 each. Mike Z. also holds 1.73 million stock options with exercise prices ranging from $8.31 to $31.

Meanwhile, chairman Harry Pearce picked up 79,000 shares.

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  • Bugsy

    I suppose that means that they have found a suitible buyer for us?

  • ex-nortel^2

    OK, butting in here …

    But here's another funny.

    You're interviewing someone. He's from Nortel and he's got a boatload of patents listed on their resume.

    So ask him, “How much have your patents generated in royalties?”

    Honest to God. The Asians haven't a clue what you're talking about.

    “I have something on paper, right? What else do you want?”

    Well, value. And results.

    You know what the real problem is? The Nortel Asians reading this will scurry away and try to figure out how to “sell” their work better. As long as it reads good on paper. Indians are the same way, too.

    They're great politicians and programmers. They're crap engineers.

  • ex-nortel^2

    Oh, and I meant royalties in the old fashioned sense. You know, like money. Stuff you can pay off your house with.

    At Nortel we had to sign away ownership of any patents we filed. It was a condition of employment.

    Honest to God.

    And the Asians and Indians signed away everything they knew and everything they couldn't steal from anyone else, just to be there.

    I think everyone is getting what they deserved now.

    And life is a good thing. I'm happy now, and I'm making things again.

    NT was just a bad dream.

  • Nortel watcher

    Interesting….I guess the comments of that San Francisco analyst from Deutsche Bank regarding MIke Z's and his executive team's loss of credibility with the investing community really got to Zafiro.

    Unfortunately for Z and H. Pearce, buying up the stock will never take the place of a sound strategy and its effective execution.

  • Nortel watcher

    continued

    ……..among other things, to drive up investor confidence.

  • ex-nt

    ex-nortel^2:

    this is a blog about nortel and not sure where all your comments about asians, indians and chinese are coming from. if you are talking about royalties on patents then look at the demographics who are in charge of the business, who should be looking to make money out of them. it will be like looking into a mirror for you.

    anybody with a patent gets my respect. all companies take over patents filed by employees so its not just nortel. if you cannot sign them over maybe you should work for yourself.

    if you need to vent go somewhere else.

  • ex-nortel^2

    I do work for myself actually.

    And not all companies take over patents filed by employees, certainly not the smaller innovative ones. What point is there to filing a patent to an employee if he does not share in the direct revenue stream provided by that patent?

    Apparently the point today is that you get to keep your job. And for someone coming to North America and willing to do anything to work here, that is good enough. An excellent deal, in fact.

    It just screws over the Canadians and Americans.

    So you do what is logical. _Don't_ give away your ideas. Tuck them away for when they might be of real value. And when the time is right, move on and try making one or two work. That's what being a start-up is about. That is how innovation works. And Nortel cuts its own throat yet again.

    It's actually worked out quite well for myself. But that's my dumb luck as much as anything. But I'm grateful.

  • ex-nt

    ex-nortel^2

    weird philosophy as its typical job saving, no sharing or hold the cards to the chest mentality, so its good you are working on your own. such people do not survive in industry. nobody likes working with them.

    do agree on one point which is profit sharing as an incentive. some companies do that well. some like NT do not either because they do not know how to monetize it or cannot afford it. same thing with university research. its all owned by the institution or sponsor. same thing with startups. no startup is going to just let their employees take precious patents to a competitor.

    again it has nothing to do with americans, canadians, asians etc. you have a warped mind of the world. we all know how Tesla got screwed over by the americans if you really want to go there.

  • ex-nortel^2

    It's not about surviving in industry. It's about making industry.

    And if you don't want to work in that kind of environment, fine, there always … Nortel.

    We all know each other's families. You keep a light touch. No one wants to ruin a good thing.

    We'll keep it going as we can. The next year or two look good. I see it as as best anyone can predict anyway.

  • NT4HELP

    ex-nortel^2

    When I read the top of this article it says “Mike Z. Snaps Up Some NT”. Your posts are about as relevant to that topic as Britney Spears being in rehab is to the Iraq war i.e. completely irrelevant.

    I'm not sure where your bitter and twisted commentary belongs (perhaps some obscure National Front site) but can I suggest you push your own narrow views somewhere else. For the record – the vast majority of the planet don't live in Canada and the US…..it's not all about you.

  • ex-nortel^2

    The bitterness comes from you, my friend. And of course it's relevant. We've hired from a pool of engineers born around the world. And it's been a constant. If you want tame well trained drones look to China or India. If you want thinking educated people then it's North America or Europe. And I've come across a group of Russian students that are first rate. These guys know how to think and problem solve. It puts even Canadians to shame. Imagine that. ;)

  • Another Nortel Watcher

    ex-nortel^2 you are a sad case. Your characterization of people from other places shows a shocking level of ignorance.

    You think people from China and India are drones because of the way they interact with you. Just remember this, they come from a different culture and they interact with you in your language…but their dogs understand a lot more of their language than you do. Think about that. You are less able to interact with them in their language than their dogs are. And I think that's likely a good representation of how you're regarded.

    It's been my experience, which is likely a lot more than yours, that the strength of offshore labs is a reflection of who manages the interface. Person-for-person, the offshore developer is usually more educated and skilled than the local developer but their performance suffers because of management and communication issues that are solvable.

    China literally owns (and pwns) North America now. Who do you think the US and Canada are borrowing all their money from?

    The Russians and the Europeans may appear to be more proactive to you because they aren't trying to treat you like a customer and they don't feel the need to respect your leadership position.

    So, you ex-nortel^2 and those who share your attitude are the problem. Get your heads out of your xenophobic butts and recognize that the world isn't flat and if you want something to work you need to help *make* it work, not sit on the sidelines and whine. You need to make the effort to understand how to effectively interact with other cultures or the world will leave you behind.

  • ex-nortel^2

    After almost three decades in this business, hustling to make something work in the real world, I've a fair view on things. We needed to hire four people and it was a tremendous education in what talent is really out there and where it comes from. You eventually unlearn the PC-speak. And you see with opened eyes again.

    I have two friends that are professors at their universities and it is a common complaint at how poorly prepared Chinese engineering students are for graduate research. These students don't question. Everything is procedural. And the point of the degree is to get a job. Drones. It's a quiet but well understood fact in the community. People are just averse to talk about it outside of the community. You can see why here.

    But these students did fit in well at Nortel. I can't argue about that.

  • Another Nortel Watcher

    ex-nortel^2 – BS. No way. What university are your two professor friends at? DeVry? I know senior people at the major universities in China and they are turning out high caliber grads. I've hired many of them. The students that your friends are exposed to may be attending American universities because they were unable to gain admission to universities in China. Just like Americans going to Mexican medical schools. Seriously guy, you're out of touch with the world. You must live in the American south which (with a few exceptions) is one of the most backward and ignorant cultures in the developed world.

  • wylde chyld

    this event resulted from a RSU vest

  • southern man

    Well, THAT's a refreshing view of things….. ex-nortel is out of touch and most of us in the American south are “backward and ignorant”…… I love tolerance and all the forms it takes…..

  • many

    BTW: On topic :)

    From: http://biz.yahoo.com/indie/080328/1152_id.html?…

    “Under Nortel's stock ownership guidelines, Zafirovski must own 5X his annual base salary of approximately $1.2M in stock within five years of being named to his post, and Pearce must own $1.6M in shares within five years of being named to his position. Share units are counted towards Pearce's holdings.

    Due to the significant decline in Nortel's stock price, Zafirovski is only about 40% of the way towards reaching the required ownership level, while Pearce is about 44% of the way there. This is despite the fact that Zafirovski has purchased more than $1.5M in stock on the open market and that he was awarded shares of restricted stock that had a value of more than $7M when issued in 2005. Nortel insiders were prohibited from conducting transactions for seven months in 2005 and four months in 2006 due to delinquent filings and other issues, narrowing the window when insiders could buy stock. Additionally, the vesting of Zafirovski's restricted stock award in late 2006 forced him to sell some shares to deal with the tax liability, locking him up for a further six months due to short-swing rules.”

  • ex-nortel^2

    Another Nortel Watcher,

    When you get to know the university system well and the professors doing research, ask them about Chinese and Indian students entering Masters and Ph.D. programs. It's not bias or racism. Their supervisors find a common frustration in how poorly the students are prepared to think independently.

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