Looking Back at Nortel’s M&A Spree

In terms of the Network purchase, go and read Bill Connor's biography on the Entrust website.

http://www.entrust.com/corporate/management/bil...

Excerpt from the biography
Before Conner joined Entrust, he held various senior executive positions at Nortel Networks, including president of Nortel Enterprise Networks and e-Business Solutions, where he successfully turned around the global $5 billion business. Conner also served as president of Nortel's first Enterprise Data Networks line of business, where he orchestrated Nortel's $9 billion acquisition of Bay Networks.
end of excerpt

If Bill was so stellar, why did he leave for Entrust?

I believe Bill also "charmed away" another Nortel employee's wife. She worked for him. Look at the performance of Entrust versus its peers - that should tell you about Bill's business skills.

I wonder how many good will charges Nortel is yet to make ...

There's $1.411 Billion of Goodwill on the Balance Sheet, most of it is associated with Carrier Networks. I wouldn't be surprised to see most of this written off in the Q4 filing.

It was Lucent's insane spending spree on data networking companies that trapped Nortel, Alcatel, Siemens, and even Cisco into using inflated stock to buy companies at ridiculous prices. Most of the time, there was a lack of due diligence, a lack of understanding of the potential revenue stream for the acquired product set, and a lack of systems to integrate and manage. And then reality and dissappointment set in and the acquisition would slowly start to die.

Unfortunately, Nortel's M&A spending spree was a disaster. The lynchpin to this disaster was their inability to integrate Bay Networks and to allow it to run in an operating mode similar to Cisco's operating mode. With Bay as a functioning core business for L2 / L3 data networking, it would have been much easier to have a rational plan for M&A acquisitions, and the integration of M&A acquisitions. But Nortel never understood how to run a data networking company that was not rooted in the heavily regimeneted style of a regulated telco company. And then came the deluge.

Lucent's activities were much worse than Nortel's. Rich McGinn overspent money (inflated stock really) like a drunken sailor without a plan or the systems and processes to actually integrate any outside entity. Ascend, Credcendo, LANNet, Cayman leap out as examples of how not to buy and integrate a company.

Cisco's record is much better than anyone else's but it had its disaster's as well. Basically Cisco's M&A activities were very successful on its Enterprise side - buying Crescendo, Kalpana, Granite, Aeronet, Linksys, etc. However, they were less successful with M&A activites on their Service Porvider side when it was run by Don Listwin and Kevin Kennedy - they bought Cerent ($6B)+, Aeropoint $6B+), and Monterey ($500M+) which were absolute disasters and were eventually written off. Cisco learned a valuable but expensive lesson - stick to what you know. That is why they were able to later buy and successfully integrate Scientific Atlanta - Cisco was one of the technology leaders in developing DOCsis and was very familiar with SA's business.

The problem with Nortel is that its CTO organization and other top business leaders are , and always were dysfunctional. They never had a good vision or understanding of how to corelate a growing portfolio with multi-year market growth opportunities across diverse markets. Any management idiot can spend money and buy a company. It takes a smart management team to have a vision, and foster such new acquisitions and channel growth progressively.

Even within established product lines, the leadership teams had no vision of a practical technology roadmap across the company. When this happens, you see multiple product groups within the company doing similar things and wasting time/effort/money. Instead of competing with competitors, they compete with other Nortel groups. Sadly this lack of proper management, and self cannibalization always has a price to be paid at the end.

This is the core reason for the downfall. A fundamental lack of basic vision for multi-year product roadmap, and a highly ineffective CTO organization that had no influence within Nortels product groups.

I wish other Canadian companies would learn from the mistakes of Nortel. It's so sad to see a telecom jewel destroyed by sheer management incompetance.

There are many creative and talented folks still left in Nortel. However, Unless we get rid of the incompetant top layer, NOTHING is going to help Nortel.

In my opinion, more than bankruptcy protection, Nortel needs protection from these top leaders who are bankrupt in creative, practical and strategic management.

The real tragedy of these acquisitions is not the paper cost (it was only inflated stock used to buy), but the dilution of Nortel's focus. Each of these acquisitons caused management to be spread thin, cash to be injected, operations to be integrated, marketing to be modified, design to be integrated, sales force to be trained, etc. At the same time, Nortel's internally developed products were neglected or canceled. What emerged in 2001 was a company bloated with too many products, not enough cash, too many employees, too many platforms, no common processes, too many locations. The Telecom bubble burst then dealt a heavy blow and Nortel never recovered. The Garys realized this and were working a plan to rationalize the mess, but they never got the chance. Frank, Bill, and Mike were oblivious to the issues and tried to run this mess as "business as usual".

In '99 I moved into a new house in one of countless new subdivisions under construction around the local so-called telecom corridor. Halfway through the build the original builders suddenly poo-poo'd the home as too dinky for their upgraded wants and needs. Ditto the next couple. So I got a good deal on this dump (unbefitting a telco engineer's lawncare guy, even) with a few extras at no extra charge.

The noble HOA was initially gung ho about keeping everything clean and upgrading the community to match the neighbors'. Residents were encouraged to install koi ponds, wind chimes, shrubs, flag poles, etc. The Joneses must keep up with their peers.

BUT! Everything all had to be approved first. Go through the proper channels. Pass the committee. Patrolwomen sporting Hillary-bob hairdo's and wearing business suits cruised in heir SUVs to spot violations, then wrote up formal warning letters at some local eatery with a wireless hotspot. Shut up, cut your grass and remit those $50/month or else.

As expected things quieted down over time, thankfully.

Fast forward and behold! the community website/bulletin board hasn't been updated since 2007, Ads were free at first, but soon afterward even posting a trampoline giveaway was taxed. E-mail contact addresses are dormant.

Cancelling my HOA membership by selling my home just cost me $175, and I doubt its going to be spent on planting spring flowers. All that admin, keeping tabs on and issuiing formal complaints to violators via USPS, costs money too. Business made simple: You pay, we collect.

OK, I'm stumped, what does this have to do with Nortel's mergers and acquisitions?

In short - Nortel was an empire on massive amounts of paper only. Today the only thing that identifies it as a company at all are a few papers.

I bought the house when I started working at Nortel.

Nortel, the HOA, the neighborhood, coworkers, and even my marriage all first eagerly followed the same tired high school schtick about keeping up with the Joneses and being popular.

Doing so takes time, rehearsal and money. But it proves to be much work for most mere mortals who typicaly lack stamina, talent and personality, so one by one they all collapsed in sodden heaps, as predicted.

The odds have it that since Nortel is nothing more than a - literally - hollow facade of the Good Old Days it will fail despite the boob job its giving itself and the hybrid SUV it drives thats somehow supposed to win back former lovers and save the planet for our kids.

If people were smart they'd take Nortel as the template for how NOT to do any number of things but they won't.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/02/...

Quote "François Lançon, Nortel's new president of enterprise sales for EMEA, said the company had filed for protection against its creditors while having $2.4bn in cash and a "reasonable" order book for the next 12 months.

Lançon said a customer survey just completed showed that half were not going to change their plans because of the Chapter 11 filing, and only 3% to 4% were "deeply worried" by it.
"
So half Nortel's customers are going to change their plans?

3 to 4% ? horsefeathers!

We already witnessed a $2B decline in revenues before bankruptcy, let alone after, so what is this only 3 to 4% are "deeply worried by it". The numbers beg to dramatically differ !

I hardly think only 3 to 4% are freaking unless this small percentage account for the vast majority of their business, in which case his statement is grossly misleading to project optimism with intent.

How many of the 96-97% that are not "worried by it" will be transitioning to others who will be around? Just what kind of optimistic speculation suggests the Nortel brand will even be around in this trend like everyone is blind to the very physics of the matter.

This something Nortel said no doubt... like downplaying folding to even contradict they knew about it earlier!

How many times now to this day... changing options gamble to cash after losing bets were laid accompanied by a $100M in legal insurance premium, cutting severances, extending to burn money, gagging employees etc... ah Nortel, blow it out your ear already!

The theatrics parallel a defendant holding a smoking gun next to the body right after a bang claiming he didn't do it... shameless...

So half Nortel's customers are going to change their plans?
===========
re
How they conducted the survey?
Sending out eMails?
Counting eMails is not the same as knowing which Half is not going to buy from Nortel.
example if you count Verizon on one side and the Indian shopping mall on the other side you will have fifty-fifty, right?
Verizon showed the way for other big customers.
If Nortel wants to participate in Verizon LTE they will have to find a partner with credibility.

Mike, this week nothing to report (???)… this week you only had the great fiasco @ MWC with LTE lost and the Alteon fire sell (for 390 times less than paid originally) … so, no time for a friday's Zmail...

You have to look at Nortel's M&A activity in the context of the time, not in today's context. At the time these acquisitions were happening ALL of the tier-one players were operating in the same mode. If you wanted to run with the big dogs, you had to get off the porch. If you didn't get off the porch, you were labeled a 'bell-head' by your customer base and were shut out of the big deals. The M&A activity during the M&A boom isn't what killed Nortel. Nortel was surviving just fine and recovering along with Cisco and the other telecom leaders until Cleghorn and Owens thought they knew better. Since they took over the operation of Nortel, it has been one continuous downhill slide. A slide defined by a hemorrhage of vision, talent, cash, and customers. These people cannot argue that they inherited the problem because regardless of how the accounting was done, the company was GROWING - cash was GROWING - at the time that Owens took over.

Mark - it would be very interesting to see a list of Cisco's and Lucent's M&A activity for the same period. I don't think ANY of these guys did a great job of absorbing their acquisitions during this period. The point is, I don't think it's a black mark for Nortel relative to their operating environment.

In the context of the time buying for example Clarify was a total stupidity and it was considered as such by the most employees I talked to at _that_ time.

The way Bay Networks was handled at _that_ time was an absolute stupidity as well, Just how clever was to label all the former Bay employees FDC (Former Data Company) and give it a "47" bar-code on their forehead,o-ps, on the badge.
I heard some AsiaPac execs quoting "bullshit routers".
My personal experience after a few good years at Bay was a very negative one: while native Nortel engineers were good, most of the managers and above were plain dumb if you wish. The higher the level the dumber.

It was Roth and Dunn (his CFO at the time) who started the downfall. The others just continued.

Btw... as bb has already pointed out, Lucent's acquisition of Ascend made all of Nortel's acquisitions look like chump change.

John Roth started Nortel's huge M&A spree. I recall that during one earnings conference call when one of the analyst (I believe it was Paul Sagawa) seemed sceptical about all of Nortel's M&A activity, John Roth brought up the name of Jack Welch. Roth said something to the effect that he learned from Jack Welch (at an executive leadership conference of some sort) that a company making as much revenue as Nortel had to do alot of M&A or the executives should be considered as not doing their due diligence.

Perhaps Nortel would be in better shape today if John Roth had never been influenced by Jack Welch.

Nortel Asset Scooped Up by Radware
James Rogers
02/20/09 - 12:28 PM EST
Network specialist Radware(RDWR Quote - Cramer on RDWR - Stock Picks) has swooped down to buy part of Nortel's(NT Quote - Cramer on NT - Stock Picks) switch business, as the troubled telecom equipment manufacturer attempts to put its house in order.

The asset purchase agreement finally ends speculation that the Israeli firm was poised to grab some of Nortel's products. Rumors emerged last month that Radware was targeting Nortel's metro Ethernet Networks business, but is now acquiring the firm's Alteon enterprise switch family.

Nortel, which recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while it restructures its business, suspended the sale of its key metro Ethernet Networks division earlier this month.

Neither Nortel nor Radware has revealed the value of the Alteon deal, although the Canadian firm's enterprise offerings are widely regarded as the juiciest parts of its product portfolio.

"This is to expand our customer and partner outreach," Radware COO Ilan Kinreich told TheStreet.com in a telephone call from Israel. "Alteon has a pretty strong brand and loyalty with customers, and we believe that, with our expertise, we can leverage that."

With clouds of uncertainty still hanging over the tech sector, Radware seized the opportunity to strengthen its product arsenal against rivals such as Cisco(CSCO Quote - Cramer on CSCO - Stock Picks), Citrix(CTXS Quote - Cramer on CTXS - Stock Picks) and F5 Networks(FFIV Quote - Cramer on FFIV - Stock Picks), according to Kinreich.

"We believe that this is a move that puts us in a stronger position in the market and will give us more growth in very challenging times," he says.

The Alteon switches, which are used to relieve the strain on groups of servers, will eventually be offered under a merged brand, called Radware Alteon, and the Israeli firm is keen to win hearts and minds among the Nortel customer base.

Radware promised to invest "significantly" in service and support for the Alteon line, including a five-year product support plan. Although he would not go into specifics, Kinreich confirmed that a number of Nortel employees, mostly Alteon engineers and support specialists, will be moving over to Radware.

"This move is a positive one for both companies and their respective customers and partners," wrote Cindy Borovick, research vice president at technology analyst firm IDC, in a statement. "It will provide a stable path forward for existing Nortel application delivery customers."

The deal was particularly complicated given Nortel's current situation, according to Radware's Kinreich.

"It was very complex," he explained. "We had to deal with three courts in three jurisdictions and many more lawyers than you would imagine."

Radware nonetheless hopes to complete the acquisition sometime between the end of March and mid-April although Kinreich explained that the deal is still subject to court approval.

The next few months will certainly be crucial for Nortel, which has been wrestling with plummeting sales of its wireless gear and recently discontinued its mobile WiMAX operations in an attempt to further streamline its business.

Ernst & Young, which is monitoring Nortel's restructuring, gave a glimpse into the company's overhaul in a recent report to the Canadian court. Cost-cutting efforts include a "detailed plan" for a reduction of Nortel's global workforce, a review of real estate, property and IT equipment leases and cuts in discretionary spending, it said.

Nortel nonetheless claimed to have taken a major step on the comeback trail earlier this month when the Ontario Superior Court of Justice granted a request to extend the firm's creditor protection until May 1.

Nortel also obtained an order from the Canadian court allowing it to postpone its annual general meeting for shareholders.

Despite its acquisition of Nortel's switch business, Radware's shares slipped 3 cents, or 0.53% to $5.58 in Friday trading, reflecting a broader dip in tech stocks that saw the Nasdaq fall 0.65%.


http://www.thestreet.com/print/story/10465197.html

The message is that they want to be a leading Unified Communications company and L4-L7 switches have a limited role in that context. Notice that Nortel retains the SSL VPN and Secure Network Access pieces which have more value in a UC play.

Personally, I think that Nortel Enterprise will be sold with the Nortel brand consolidating around their Service Provider business.

Good assessment, but I think Nortel will keep Enterprise.

http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2009/02/i...

The message is that they are going under. Nortel has as much chance of being a leading UC vendor as Mike Z has of being named the 2008 CEO of the Year. Note that this was a straight '363' liquidation sale.

There are too many people looking at Nortel's predicament and seem to think that finding corn kernels in steaming pile of horseshit is a something wonderful and nourishing. This was a desperate sale and at a very low price for the asset.

L4 - L7 switching plays an important role in any large scale deployment where an entity wants to deploy policy controls above the IP & TCP layers, and such is the case with the large scale deployment of UC.

The Alteon product set was a decent product set and should have been part of any so called Nortel attempt to become an Enterprise fouced company. There aren't many good things left to peddle off to generate the cash needed to fund a restructured Nortel after it has to satisfy the claims of the bond holders and suppliers. or to build a restructured business. They can't give their GSM business away and they will probably be forced to fork over $400M or so be allowed to shut the doors of their GSM business. CAA and Chapter 11 does not mean anything to the EU and to the French Government when it comes to protecting workers and pensioners rights.

This sale simply demonstrates that Nortel is going down the path of a Chapter 7 liquidation. The bond holders have decided that they don't believe in Mike Z and his team of GEniuses and they want the cash. Many of the bond holders purchased Nortel paper at 6 to 10 cents on the dollar. Anything above getting back 15 cents is a very nice profit and at lot less risky than allowing Mike Z to take all of Nortel's cash and restructure the company.

Much of it was a paper printing operation with numbers moved around on a balance sheet. Wait a second. I just described the entire banking industry. Doh.

So unlike the mobilized masses waving protest signs demanding change?

M & A's were never fully integrated into Nortel and died a slow and painful death.

1. All the indian and chinese managers were laid off and none have been part of the executive and senior management team now. Consequently, the management team is very NA focussed, arrogant and lacks much needed "common sense" and global perspective. It shows in their decision making over the past several years.

2. The problem lies deeper than the executives and propogates throughout the layers of management that Nortel has. The fact of the matter is that having worked for BNR in the 80's, most mangement here is living in those glory days of BNR and are trying to re-create that environment without living in the present. Others are just killing time to hang on to their jobs as long as they can and are ready to do "whatever" it takes.

3. R & D has been without purpose or commercial interests in mind. Product portfolio's are outdated. Acquired products were never fully integrated.

4. People here value relationships more than performance. You watch my back, I shall watch yours.

5. This company doesn't understand sales and marketing principles at all.

Among other things these are the main reason's that they are driving the company into oblivion. There is nothing more dangerous to see in a company's management than "Ignorance in action" combined with "Little foresight, judgement and proactiveness and vision" to adjust to the new environment we live in today.
Whatever is being done now is "too little too late" as the company is past the point of no return.

All these smart, fast talking executives are well intentioned in turning this company around but in reality "don't know how". Consequently, they keep on talking about strategy, future direction and make decisions without having the slightest clue. As a result, "Truth is far from reality and is whatever the management can make others believe in". Employees and shareholders are susceptible and gullible to their expert judgement and words of wisdom.

In reality, the management really doesn't care about the future of the company, the employees and the shareholders but are looking out for themselves.

They are already rich and just playing a game for which we have to pay the price. Even if you replace Mike Z and team with a new set of top NA brass, it won't change anything. Didn't we try that a few times already.

This company needs global managers with real world experience and strategy preferably not from NA. The truth is hard to swallow. We don't want any more corruption. We want hope. We need Barack Obama clone for Nortel. We believe.

We all believed Z was Nortel's Obama; as a foreigner he appeared to have that badly- needed global perspective. He turned out to be more entrenched than his NA cronies.
Sadly, he steered Nortel right into the "Event Horizon" and the Board watched as the gravity of the situation got worse and worse each day. Now they get paid in cash, management has its KEIP program (ensuring they continue to legally rob the company) while employees and stockholders get tossed out to ‘lighten the load’. Deep Impact! Over and out….--bb

No, not everyone saw Z as Nortel's Obama. Some of us saw someone with no discernible telecom experience aside from Motorola, which has often had the notoriety of worst corporate culture --ever. I'm not saying he drove us into the ditch -- that was already done. But he certainly hasn't managed to get the tow truck sufficiently hooked up.

Nortel paid zilch for all of them; zilch! It was all a Wall Street con du jour; Wall Street would artificially increase the value of the acquiring companies (via their highly visible analysts) while the bankers would then promote ‘market share expansion via product acquisitions’ and ‘time-to-market advantages’. It became vogue for megalomaniacal CEO to outdo each other with the size of the acquisition. Rich McGinn, then Lucent’s CEO forked over $25B for Ascend (a second rate player) and Mory Ejibat (Ascend’s CEO) is still laughing every time he goes to the bank. All of the Telco vendors (Alcatel, Cisco, Ericson, Lucent, Nortel, Siemens, at al) used their high-flying stocks; monopoly money. Shareholders were diluted but the smart money got out early, and made real money.

However, the ones that truly made billions were those very same Wall Street bankers who took cash for their multibillion transactions. That is how Qwest ( a start-up then with no assets and no sales but a high-flying ‘future value’ stock) ended-up buying US West; an RBOC with real assets, customers and balance sheet.

Bottom line; the acquisitions were nothing more than paper printing but the real cash went to the snake oil salesmen; the same ones that also conned foreign governments in buying ‘mortgage-backed securities”. That con reached trillions of dollars. Gotta handed to them, these guys are very creative…--bb

Yep, you pretty much nailed it. The real story here is not Nortel's outrageous purchase prices for these entities, since almost all of it was paid for in now worthless NT stock, so the loss would have happened anyways.

The real story is the scheming done by these devious brokers who enabled the transactions. Much like how the mortgage brokers were the among the only ones that profited from the subprime mortgage scandal.

Just follow the money...--bb

Indeed, cui bono?

.. and their scams will never cease to find fertile soil, either, no matter who the masses elect and/or accept as their leaders, where they live, or how many lightbulbs we remove from our homes.

Agreed! and the beat (ing) goes on :) ...--bb

Only $29.5 billions U.S....

I think that Nortel has bought & destroyed more companies that that.

Lets not forget Shasta, or Tasman, or the optical guys in Zurich...and the other nickel & dime stuff that was bought in 2008.

C'mon! if you're gonna make a list...make it complete. Stop slackin' off!

Gee, you guys are demanding. :) I was only counting M&A done during the telecom boom, but I've updated the list to include Shasta and JDS' Swiss optical business.

Thanks, Mark

I remember our execs applauding the acquisition of Bay and cheering the divestiture of "those metal bangers" that comprised Nortel's manufacturing. Later I was involved with the Promontory acquisition and the attempt to integrate them into the Nortel line. In both cases, I thought, where are we going with this? Where is our focus? What kind of integrated solution are we offering when all we're doing is buying puzzle pieces that don't create any kind of big picture? We denigrated Cisco because all they sold were routers. Well, years later, here we are, and since we no longer manufacturing anything, we have nothing to fall back on. Looks a heck of a lot like a ditch to me.

If you were really involved with it, you'd probably know that it was called promotory, not promoNtory.

Funny you should mention that. I remember it being spelled Promotory and thinking it made no sense, but I doubted my memory so I googled it and it came up promoNtory., which is actually a word. And believe me, when I say involved, I mean as grunt peon water-bearer. And at Nortel, grunt peon water-bearers aren't allowed to ask questions about the emperor's clothes.

So, what, now?

Storing Power? Promontory Project Sets IP Storage Record

October 24, 2001

Backed by some of the heaviest storage and transmission firms in the business, the project aims to break barriers for IP storage data transmission.
The "Promontory Project," a multivendor industry initiative named after the location where America's first transcontinental railroad was joined, demonstrated a coast-to-coast IP storage link at speeds of 2.5 Gbps using a 10 Gbps packet over SONET connection


Then theres also:

DSL to be highlighted at ComNet

January 21, 2000 4:07 pm PT

Promotory and Jetstream Communications also plan to showcase voice over DSL technology at ComNet. The companies claim that 24 voice circuits can be provisioned in minutes using its CPX-100 voice service platform.

Nortel Networks announced earlier this month its plans to buy Promotory.

Elsewhere its right back to :

Prior to working in the non-profit sector, Shemra spent four years as the Accounting and Human Resources Manager at a start-up company, Promontory Communications, where she successfully orchestrated with the CFO their merge with Nortel Networks in 2000.


Looks to me like "promotory" and "promontory" describe the samo: a biggole hard thingy jutting out of something/into something writhing and turgid

>We denigrated Cisco because all they sold were routers.

There in lies the downfall. Routers (IP) were the key to the future that Northern Telecom (BNR alumni) kept on looking down their nose at. Making a good router is HARD to do. How many routing programs did Nortel not only spend $100s of millions on, but not one of them was released to the general market. Why because it was harder than they thought and Northern Telecom attitude was it had to be perfect and grossly over engineered.

Nortel acquired one of the better routers in the market via Bay Networks and promptly killed it with the thinking that the Passport 9000 was the future .....didn't ever release did it. The execs at Nortel in 1998 didn't get it. By the time Zman got there the damage was already done.

Verizon's Hyperstream backbone is.....Bay routers (never had an outage by the way), the NYSE, ASE, Hong Kong Stock exchange, Australian Stock Exchange, FAA backbone, NASA space flight telemetry.......all ran on Bay routers. The worlds vital networks in the late 1990s, ran on Bay routers - not Cisco. The idiots in Ottawa never understood what they had.

Cisco ate Nortel for lunch. Nortel is now just the butt of jokes in the Cisco conference rooms.

I have had first hand experience in some of the the accounts you mentioned (down to the code level). I would never claim that Bay routers were running without downtime. I would also completely disagree that the worlds vital networks in the late 90's were not running Cisco but Bay primarily.

Having said that Wellfeet/Bay routers could and should have been developed into something more innovative and competitive. But Nortel bought Bay (Dave House, do you sleep well?).

Not even that, one thing Cisco never did is kick a sick puppy. They are after Microsoft now...--bb

Cisco never had to kick or even fight. Cisco just sat back and watched Nortel self destruct.

Agree; said so myself in a prior post. They correctly profiled Z before he even took the helm of Nortel…--bb

$30B wasted in acquisitions and now a measly $20M liquidation to the highest bidder makes the news.

It shows just how much the SS Nortantic has shrunk and lost money since the highest traded stock to a $40M cap trading under a penny extreme presplit, more debt than cash in the single digit billion range, and sold off anything not nailed down after printing so many billions in Nortanic paper just to have survived another day before becoming bankrupt and delisted. A far cry from its ex-titan's former glory.

No what will this $20M sale cover? 4 days of Nortel's costs as they wind down their operations and cash? Heck they paid more than $20M just for their CEO 3 years ago. Such a small amount hardly news worthy short of the almost 8 billion they paid for it to illustrate dramatic decline.

so which ones were bought with cash? ... still a waste though. if they hadn't diluted the stock so much, they would have been able to raise more cash easier.

I'm pretty sure that all of them were bought with stock, since even in the John Roth days Nortel didn't have a large amount of cash in the bank. The fact is that it was still a huge waste because Roth could have simply issued $30 billion worth of Nortel's then high flying stock and then used the proceeds for more worthwhile goals. For instance, $30 billion certainly could buy a heck of a lot of engineering and marketing. Roth instead spent $30 billion on almost totally worthless acquisitions.

yup, I agree