January 14, 2009 at 2:00 AM EST

Former technology titan Nortel Networks Corp. [NT-T] is expected to file for bankruptcy protection as early as today

According to sources working with Toronto-based Nortel and its creditors, the company plans to seek court approval for creditor protection as early as this morning

Shareholders will likely see their holdings all but wiped out.

They just folded.

http://business.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto…

January 14, 2009 at 2:00 AM EST

Former technology titan Nortel Networks Corp. [NT-T] is expected to file for bankruptcy protection as early as today

According to sources working with Toronto-based Nortel and its creditors, the company plans to seek court approval for creditor protection as early as this morning

Shareholders will likely see their holdings all but wiped out.

They just folded.

http://business.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto…

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2009/01/13/nortel…
“Paying would use up about 10 per cent of the cash available to Nortel in North America.”

Approx. 10% is only $1B in “cash available” What about the rest of their $1.3B of the $2.3B reported cash?
( after selling so many assets and printing so many billions in Nortel paper, unable to sell or print even more, even this cash is increasingly declining, revisiting under $2B in Q206's cash balance they had to print 10% bonds to pay increasingly antsy 4% creditors).

Is this unavailable balance tied up in debt covenants? (like when creditors increased their cash collateral from $1B to $1.5B, due to post ultimatum settlement revisions they downplayed to double) Why is it unavailable?

Considering their cash burn of 250M this quarter alone, does this equal 25% of their $1B in cash available! If it does, this indicates they do not have even the lower end of their 12 to 18 month spectrum as they claim.

Has this already catalyzed to a mass exodus of customers and leery suppliers who may no longer want to extend terms where they must change forecasts again midstream like single digit growth to loss, or 3 to 5 years fixes and almost 100% later, $20 buying opportunities around a year ago to 30 cents today, like bonusgate fraud profits, BSNL, PEC, Neptune, Putian, WiMax,/LTE etc.. hypeconactivity to today's cartooned avatars.(endless) leading up to all this?

Now, aging and tanking CDMA that accounts for almost all profits also came in lower than they indicated according to an analyst.

I hardly think Nortel hiring bankruptcy lawyers is worthy of downplaying anymore than delisting or antsy bondholders who hired the same lawyers used in Lehman Bros bankruptcy.

Something is brewing alright.

If history serves as any example from nontransparent Flextronics amendments to more recent pondering bids at twice the anticipated value. etc., nothing has changed with endless contradictions to worsening credibility.

Increasingly fewer are hoping for the best unrealistically with increasingly more bracing for the worse realistically. I do not believe anyone is observing this untruthfully at this point in good conscience. =)