Comments on: A Post-MEN Plan: Pay Down Debt

By: exnt

exnt — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:11:52 +0000

You like Flaherty, Nelson, and Roese?? Tell me you are joking!

By: exnt

exnt — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:11:52 +0000

You like Flaherty, Nelson, and Roese?? Tell me you are joking!

By: Tongue.In.Cheek

Tongue.In.Cheek — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:59:53 +0000

My opinion is that it really doesn't matter what type of business is being run as two types of senior executives are required. You need a Business Executive that manages P&L etc. and a Customer Deliverables Executive that manages sales, marketing and product strategy etc. I think that Nortel has some good Business Executives in select areas and some good Customer Deliverables Executives in others but not a consistent team. I like Flaherty, Nelson & Roese to deliver some of those specific items. However, as you and I have discussed here a couple of weeks ago, Nortel could use a strong Chief Software Architect role to drive new customer platforms.

By: broadbandbill

broadbandbill — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:24:29 +0000

TIC

You have (correctly) outlined a viable strategy for Nortel, however, this is yet another turnaround within an existing turnaround. Given that the management teams of NT’s competitors (Cisco, IBM, MSFT, etc.) have solid and well-established domain expertise in the enterprise market (and not just legacy equipment) how do you rate the ability of NT’s management team to execute. Comments, pls…–bb

By: Tongue.In.Cheek

Tongue.In.Cheek — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:20:35 +0000

There are a couple of things I would like to know but don't know where to find the data.

1) What is the 5-year revenue and CAGR values for MEN?
2) What is the 5-year revenue and CAGR values for VoIP and Unified Communications delivered by both Enterprise and Carrier Hosted models?

What we also don't know is if a MEN disposition would include a portion of the existing debt or if there would be an increase in the cash value of the transaction directly tied to the business unit debt value.

No doubt some of the proceeds will go towards restructuring costs. After that I hope Nortel makes the decision to invest in new software interests that are directly relevant to their UC direction such as Web.Alive. If they want to participate in the UC market, then they will need more UC Applications that customers will want to deploy.

By: protosphere

protosphere — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:46:03 +0000

Since they want to divest Metro Ethernet to pay for more layoffs, perhaps reducing personnel costs is more pressing than reducing increased interest payments. Reducing either has its price with lower revenues.