Looking Back in Time…2005

By Mark Evans | Published: July 27, 2009

With Nortel being sold off in parts – aka death by a thousand blows – it’s interesting to look at back in time to when Nortel’s prospects were uncertain but there was still hope.

Here’s a good quote from Nortel chairman Harry Pearce upon the hiring of Mike Zafirovski in late-2005:

“Mike Zafirovski has the kind of proven, team-building leadership that has seen him create significant new value during his career in two of the world’s most important global corporations. “He’s the right leader to build on the important work of Bill Owens – and take Nortel to the next level.”

Clarification: Bill Owens did not do “important work” while Nortel’s CEO. He came in to stabilize the S.S. Nortel after Frank Dunn was abruptly fired amid an accounting scandal. If Owens had wanted to do important work, he would have diplomatically stepped aside so Gary Daichendt and Gary Kunis could have gone about reinventing Nortel.


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  • bankrupt_bob

    Nothing like the speed of the legal system in resolving the case of Frank Dunn.

    And, yeah, MZ was the right leader to “take Nortel to the next level,” alright!

  • we3

    Yes – the 2 Gary's were indeed the opportunity to enable Nortel to reset and refocus. Unfortunately, the Board was not ready to take this 'risk'. More unfortunate is the apparent miscommunication that appears to have occurred between 'the Board' and Gary Daichendt about his future 'evolution' to CEO.

    http://www.markevanstech.com/2005/10/21/nortel-…

    Interesting that Gary is occupying his time sitting on various boards including up and coming SMB/Enterpise VOIP player Shoretel.

  • Milan_Bekich

    Owens was a martinet who did nothing but strut around barking out orders that were ignored by everyone but the bum kissers at Nortel Government Solutions. It was a laugh riot watching Owens goose step around in Ontario, Texas and Virginia while being escorted by NGS flunkies.

    Whenever he stopped suddenly Saffell and Sherman would have to use a winch to extract Mara the Air Force wife from Owens posterior.

    Owens spent US$ 448 million for PEC in 2005. Today the sale of all of Enterprise probably won't fetch much more.

    Rear Admiral Milan

  • GoProto

    In an elevator that only has one direction: Going Down? Why yes, thank you.

  • pec

    I think the majority of the value (at least 90%) in the Enterprise sale comes from PEC alone though. :)

  • protosphere

    “He’s ( Zafirovski) the right leader to build on the important work of Bill Owens – and take Nortel to the next level.”

    ” and take Nortel to the next level.” must be Nortellese

    Zafirovski said the exact same thing about Hackney taking “Enterprise to the next level”.

    In both instances we can infer what this has translated to be.

  • stillnortelerfornow

    First, best wish to those CDMA engineers, hope E// will take as many of them as possible. There are many great engineers in this company. E// are a great and strong company. You guys soon will be no longer under such poor management and reading or hearing bull$hit from our COE, VP anymore.
    I hope E// won't take any VP or managers from Nortel, they don't deserve anything.
    They caused the company in such disaster and yet still taking the bonus. Think about that, the 2 largest wireless carriers ATT and Verizon in US use a lot of Nortel equipments. Our wireless business are not that bad but yet they made the company like that.

  • smokeemout

    Who will win enterprise?
    Vote here

    http://www.learnmyself.com/personality.asp?p=ta…

  • whatnext4nt

    Why couldn't the BoD's find and hire decent CEO's?

  • Milan_Bekich

    I would be happy to pick up the balance of Enterprise for 10% of the total sale price. The only value in PEC are the contracts it holds, most of which are getting long in the tooth.

    Milan

  • golfingpokerplayer

    You need a decent BoD to make a decent decision on a decent CEO!
    Nuff indecency said??

  • ex_nortel_field_guy

    I see Bill Owens taking a lot of negative press. Just remember what a CF he got thrown into. Corruption, scandal, thievery and incompetence on all fronts. His job was to clean house and plug the leaks until the BoD got off their respective rumps and hired a permanent CEO. I remember reading with joy the flood of resignation letters from top execs shortly after he took over and looked forward to almost every Friday to find out who bought it next. He may not have been a stellar CEO but he was one of the few high level execs that still had a shred of respect. Nortel needed a good enema after Frank Dunn was kicked out. Bill knew where to put the hose.

  • williamtran

    Mike is very smart guy, but in the enviroment and very difficult sittuation what can we do? when you join to company and organization very messy, no leading any thing in the world. Specially after 2002 finance problem was happend for Nortel, there is less money invest to R&D and there is no direction cleary to NT.

  • richardcbrand

    Mark:
    As an ex I've enjoyed your commentary so far and appreciate your insight but cannot agree with your comments about Bill Owens. I was a member of the Silicon Valley (Santa Clara) CTO team that developed so much of the IPR for TRUE optical ETHERNET (not SONET) that later fueled the MEN designs and became the core of the architecture that attracted Verizon and BT among other SP's to consider Nortel MEN.
    Back to Bill, I took the time to talk to Bill when he came to Santa Clara for well attended employee feedback sessions. It was obvious from talking to Bill that when he took on the reins after the Dunn fiasco, he had no idea as to the depth of the financial mess that had been left to him. At the time being a JCI 6, I remember receiving a substantial bonus that did not make any sense to me given the starvation that the product development teams were experiencing. After the truth came out about these bonus payments Sue Spradley was the only one to show any backbone and offer to return her bonus money.
    What Bill Owens did was to provide the needed stability to a company that was reeling from financial and PR chaos. He also knew how to “manage” the Nortel BoD which I feel that Mike “Z” never did except maybe to get them to pay off Moto in order to hire him.
    Finally to the fantasy of the “two Garys” Bill did the right thing for Nortel. Before coming to work for Nortel in 2000 I had previously worked for Cisco as a consultant for the number 2 guy under Chambers and can say that the “Garys” would have never fit into the Nortel culture, even less so that the “Z” man. My Nortel experience was that there existed a built in bias to anything Cisco within the company and this was not just a Bay Networks bias but in Ottawa as well.
    I had met them when they came to the Santa Clara site and my impression was the Kunis seemed ready to mix into the environment, but that Daichendt was aloof and condescending so when we in SC heard that Bill had pulled the plug we were pleased.
    I believe that Bill did what he could to for Nortel but the BoD has been asleep at the switch and can be held accountable for the fiasco of our company.
    Richard Brand, 5042759, and proud to say I contributed to the Nortel IPR. May it not go for cheap.

  • richardcbrand

    Mark:
    As an ex I've enjoyed your commentary so far and appreciate your insight but cannot agree with your comments about Bill Owens. I was a member of the Silicon Valley (Santa Clara) CTO team that developed so much of the IPR for TRUE optical ETHERNET (not SONET) that later fueled the MEN designs and became the core of the architecture that attracted Verizon and BT among other SP's to consider Nortel MEN.
    Back to Bill, I took the time to talk to Bill when he came to Santa Clara for well attended employee feedback sessions. It was obvious from talking to Bill that when he took on the reins after the Dunn fiasco, he had no idea as to the depth of the financial mess that had been left to him. At the time being a JCI 6, I remember receiving a substantial bonus that did not make any sense to me given the starvation that the product development teams were experiencing. After the truth came out about these bonus payments Sue Spradley was the only one to show any backbone and offer to return her bonus money.
    What Bill Owens did was to provide the needed stability to a company that was reeling from financial and PR chaos. He also knew how to “manage” the Nortel BoD which I feel that Mike “Z” never did except maybe to get them to pay off Moto in order to hire him.
    Finally to the fantasy of the “two Garys” Bill did the right thing for Nortel. Before coming to work for Nortel in 2000 I had previously worked for Cisco as a consultant for the number 2 guy under Chambers and can say that the “Garys” would have never fit into the Nortel culture, even less so that the “Z” man. My Nortel experience was that there existed a built in bias to anything Cisco within the company and this was not just a Bay Networks bias but in Ottawa as well.
    I had met them when they came to the Santa Clara site and my impression was the Kunis seemed ready to mix into the environment, but that Daichendt was aloof and condescending so when we in SC heard that Bill had pulled the plug we were pleased.
    I believe that Bill did what he could to for Nortel but the BoD has been asleep at the switch and can be held accountable for the fiasco of our company.
    Richard Brand, 5042759, and proud to say I contributed to the Nortel IPR. May it not go for cheap.

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