Doomsday Scenarios Emerging

What a nice touch, telco.

Thank you.

Well here you go.
If you are white and english speaking it is very difficult.
Look at the visible minority hiring quotas.
Look at the official bilingualism rules of law in Canada, especially in Ontario, and especially in Ottawa.
Look at how the government hands out refugee status payments, welfare, social assisted housing and money encouraging foreigners to come in here and have as many kids as they want knowing the social programs will pay for them. Walk into a doctors clinic in ontario and you'll see the reality of the situation.
This is the way it is.
Wake up.

Mark,

Thanks for all your work.

I wonder what your agenda is. You seem to spew hatred at every junction. This blog is about Nortel, not about how you have some beef with minorities/foreigners/the bogeyman or the government. Your opinions would likely be more relevant in the sludge that forms the CBC reader comments.

Having one paragraph that is accurate and relevant is one more paragraph of accuracy and relevance than you'll ever have.

Missing the point again.
There is a big difference between changing a job and having to pound the pavement looking for one.
Changing a job implies a person can afford to do that. Needing a job is another mattter. Saying you feel “locked in” is ridiculous. And far as having sympathy for somebody who is simply changing jobs but has nothing meaningful to worry about, like feeding your kids, paying your mortgage, paying your massive debt etc. Well I have NO sympathy for anyone outside of those categories. If you don't like where you are leave. Someone will be grateful, contrary to what some people infer here.

who will believe the market analyst? these guys bring the crisis first and want to destory more and more company. They have done that. They want more…. Pls. believe yourself instead of these looks “smart” analyst.

This isn't Yahoo Finance or CNN Money, it's a BLOG. Blogs are for news AND/OR commentary. If you want more objectivity, go to yahoo finance and look for the news headlines on Nortel.

thank you, thats what i've been sayiing all along. so many of these people seem to consider aan as some kind of a collection of all reports on nortel. blog is a blog, i agree

If you look at your comments and read them aloud you will find that instead of reason there is raw impetuous emotion driving the words. This is not logic, this is anger, and worst of all it is anger because someone did not agree with your view point.

While no one likes to be pessimistic or talk of the worse, I can tell you that the “doomsday scenario” (even if that term is a big sensationalist) is something on the minds of many NT employees.

You hear it at lunch time, over a coffee break or even as idle chat. People are worried. Worried about their family, their future and their hard earned pension. Even if bankruptcy is not just around the corner, this current economic downturn has changed the situation. All bets are off. Since Nortel was forced to revise 3rd quarter estimates back in September, the economy has gotten considerably worse. How will this affect Nortel?

Nortel does have options. The exec. teams knows that the cash burn issue is their #1 priority, which has resulting in spending freezes across the board. This may buy some time. But real restructuring and change also costs money – how will this affect NT's ability to adapt?

At this point there are too many variables to say anything for sure – but the signs do not look positive.

its unfortunate you still don't seem to understand. and that you just keep defining other peoples thought process and emotions for them. let me make this clear. i have not been involved in this discussion with a single bit of emotion. perhaps it was you who got too emotional, perceiving my comments as been driven from anger. and it was you who disagreed with my view point in the first place. and i'm not the one resulting to a personal and irrelavent attacks just to get the final words out.

i guarentee that you'll reply to this again. but i've proven my point (i don't care if you didn't get it) and won't be wasting any of my time with this pointless conversation. grow up

A blog is a great place to express opinion. However, if someone manufactures false information trying to present it as facts, then I will challenge that if I see it. I understand that many posters here want to see Nortel fail. Some have invested years of effort to see that happen using this blog (and others) as their soap box.

This blog also has an effective business plan. Negative information will attract more traffic which yields an increase in revenue from advertising impressions on the home page. I'm OK with that and good for Mark for having an effective business plan in how to run this blog.

i have no problem with mark reporting facts. what my problems are that mark reports some facts, even multiple times, and other facts not at all.
notafan
===================
re
I don't thing AAN would look better if Mark took your advice with your tongue in the chick and polluted this blog with all small positive info_details like my example
“Mike Z found $10 bill in the desk's drawer and sent it to B Owens. Further investigation showed it was $10 F Dunn left there leaving the office in a harry so Owens sent that money to F D.
What a nice guys Nortel's CEO are, right?”

Let's focus on the big picture.
The big picture is represented by NT chart.
The big picture is painted by melting cash position and cash flow negative for years.
Big picture is $4.5 bill in debt vs $0.3 bill market cap
Big picture is that Nortel has been looking for a buyer of the best assets and found none yet
The big picture is $500 mill less in new orders for Q2 and $400 mill less for Q3. How low 2009 revenue would be?
Big picture is job cuts after job cuts, and the revolving doors of senior manager positions.
Analysts setting ZERO targets and talking about possibility of going BK is a big factor which should not be neglected by AllAbout Nortel blog and Mark did report that here.
Thank you Mark Good job. Stay focused. Don't take seriously the diversion tactics of well known “Nortel's optimists” posting on all boards for years. Anyone who believed them and invested in NT lost their money.
That's another Big Picture

No kiddin.
The media (television, print, radio) and analysts have always been brutally tough on NT. If people really think however that is the cause of their current problems or that it will determine their future you should wake up and smell the ammonia.

You were missing an important point, that if you quit w/o package you can be screwing the next guy out of the package too.
That's all i was saying.

Who would quit just for the sake of quitting? Any reasonable person would either find a new job FIRST, then quit, or wait to get notified that he is on the list, start looking asap while collecting the package. IS THAT DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?
Now WTH is this “just going out to look for one” talk? I go out to look for things on a regular basis, but i don't quit the job that pays the mortgage when i do that, do i?
Let's be REAL here.

nope
I don't agree with your opinion about that
I have been watching analysts' recommendations for NT for years and I found out only one or two Bearish analysts on NT in the past.
Most targets were up up from the traded price so they all were optimistic about NT stock direction.
It was Mike Z who sold them BS about the turn around!
Or the BS about single digit growth in 2008
Lets talk about that Sir.
Why do you avoid that?
Why do you use so many aliases accusing other of obsessive posting?
Are those your names?

aliases

* Realist
* SexyBeast
* Sexy Beast
* Plastered
* plastered
* Limeoid.
* Hogan
* Daniel
* JoeFriday
* Clint
* Eli
Why ?

If all it took were media bashing to cease then I'd put Mike Zafirovski on American Idol in a heartbeat to reverse all Nortel's problems. Stop minimizing the seriousness of the challenges.

In my experience, the job market for high tech is universally terrible right now, unless you are lucky enough to have 10 years experience in a technical niche that is hard to fill. It's my opinion that more people would be leaving Nortel if there were places to go to, but right now there are not.

F**k you.
how bout that.

Absolutely coherent, accurate evaluation there. Bravo, somebody with some brains. Especially in Ottawa Ontario is what you said true and to a lesser extent in pigtown Toronto. Ottawa is a government town frist and foremost where dog eats dog and the french poodle is eating all the competition. Silicon Valley North is rapidly disappearing while the government and people like john manley do nothing but decide how many more immigrants to bring in next year and blame racism and poverty for all the ills on Toronto Streets. Mcguinty is a disgrace. Terry Matthews has given recent warnings what will happen to Hi Tech in Ottawa. He'll be right as usual. Another accurate remark you made is that more people would leave NT if there were places to go but it is only going to get worse visa vie high tech given my analysis above. Things are going to get worse, not better for high tech and jobs in general in the ottawa region, unless again of course you are that french poodle.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are the places to be, and that will become more apparent in months to come. Ontario is a shithole and Quebec not far behind, again, unless you are that french poodle.

Your statement applies dead on to Martha Bejar, the former CALA president at NT, who left approx. 2 yrs ago for a marketing PR post at MicroSoft.
Talk about bailing out in time!

It will be interesting to see if Bejar is able to help any NT employees come to MS without making the trek to Seattle.

The inside money is played on the following: Nortel is in close negotiations with Nokia/Siemens. M&A teams have been in Germany all week. NT is in much worse shape than the Market knows and will be bought by, merge with Nokia/Siemens, or file bankruptcy as early as this week. This will be what Z-boy talks about on Tuesday in his worldwide GIS. Given a 1 year downturn, NT will burn through its cash before the midpoint of 2009. We all know that the global downturn run more than 12 months.

What happen to packages in a bankruptcy or Nokia/Siemens scenarios?

Regards,
Waiting for a Parting Gift

You are correct. The Nokia-Siemens JV announced ~1250 layoffs recently but said they were part of a “previously announced” cost cutting plan:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gikbBZ4iha31…

In bankruptcy, no packages need to be paid as part of layoffs. In an acquisitoin, packages are likely.