Behind the Scenes of Nortel’s Bankruptcy Decision

The rag citizen rarely gets things right and this is no exception.
Who killed Nortel.
Here is who killed Nortel.
Whoever elected the Board of Directors.
Because the Board of Directors hired all the useless executives
who in turned breeded and allowed useless management to flourish.
Bad executives made bad decisions and management was just a consequence.
It all starts at the top. The Board hired the executives.
Whomever hired the board is to blame period.
You can blame, roth, dunn, Z, poor management, bad decisions like
outsourcing, brutal inability to stay ahead of the curve regarding technological
trends, too many hands in one pie, the brutal and pathetic actions of polticians at the federal, provincial and municipal level, mcguintys stabbing of his own people in ontario regarding pensioners etc etc..
The fact remains the Board was all wrong and they created the firestorm.
I am sure you have all heard of the domino effect.
No different for Nortel.

Even less than 1B would have been enough for Nortel to survive the credit markets implosion, a fall in revenue and multiple interest payments. Granted some jobs would have still had to go but Nortel would have emerged as a smaller more nimble competitor similar to Juniper. That's not to say Nortel wouldn't have spent another decade or so in decline. After all we know the management tactics and strategies were simply not correct for a technology company. Zafirovski neglects to mention that he left Motorola in worse shape than when he started - as it was new management that had to come up with a strategy for the Motorola phone business to survive. He was simply not up to the monumental task of remaking Nortel.

"One wept."

I wonder which "one?"

MZ "cry me a river!"

Rumor has it ever-frugal Mike inadvertently turned the crapper lights off on one of them sitting tight as he exited the lavatory.. after washing his hands with 30% diluted water... and a 1/3 of a recycled paper towel

(As for "David Drinkwater" - no puns, please!)

Terry Savage of Lazard Frères advised Nortel to file while it still had cash and flexibility. "We’ve never seen a company as well prepared for Chapter 11," he said.

"well-prepared" - now thats plain hysterical. Almost as funny as Zs whore-in-church quip during his Commons summit: "It is pretty warm here, heh."

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/nortel/Video+...

Mr. Zafirovski’s disappointment was profound. "I never left anything in worse shape than I found it," he’d declared three years earlier.

"But if you're gonna do thaet, do it on a graend scale, at the truly perfect tieme." -
Mike Z

Zafirovski.
This is when they told him that he won't be able to fly his jet.

1 or 2 billion for MEN is nothing compared to the $20B wasted in acquisitions during the bubble, or $300B in lost market cap. Everyone backed Nortel at some point.

Selling MENS would have only prolonging the pain with their cash burn, a band aid solution for major hemorrhaging, after the largest fraud in Canada accompanying further revisions, keeping and paying more bonuses, endless hype and contradictions, etc...

It was destined to fail the moment economic power was fueled by corruption and greed. Transforming a culture of innovation to one of remuneration.

This is the way things work contrary to the profoundly astounding liberties, protection, and benefit of doubt they were already extended... to the point of becoming thankfully gone... weep not for tyranny

US banks today pay hundreds of billions in bonuses instead of stimulating the economy after government bailouts, bailouts that gave them an edge against their competition, the same bailouts they sought like Nortel before paying even more bonuses as they cut employee severances. Big guys are immune like Nortel's past board. The OJ's of poetic justice may not always prevail as attorney generals even murder. What a world...

I see John Manley who wants less regulation, speaks on TV talk shows, visited Afghanistan right after Nortanic folded, as his law firm represents Dunn. They call honorable as they call Mulrooney... As many brows raised as Microsoft winning antitrust suits in the US too...ah so many good boys after so much economic bad... with inaction something terrible happens, nothing...I hope Moore does a movie on it if the legal powers aren't too formidable to do so.

Nortel is gone, some one should start looking at some US banks after these Enrons and Nortels of this world .. we can't go on like this forever where 1% of the people own 95% of the wealth... but we are

...no radical moves to fix a thing aside from stimulus to feed the sheeple before yet another slaughter down the road as even the stimulus is robbed, no stimulus and everyone dies is the catch 22 ... we are held hostage by terrorists in our own countries... at least this time for once some one said no to this hard to flush Nortel...

Canada is looking better... and the U.S. is noticing; lets pray things get better with further relief than ongoing terror.. many sagas during these primitive times where the robber baron remains alive and well... not just the recently departed fraud Notell whos since would have been forgiven had they emerged successful as even more disappointing to harlot principle.

$1B in cash is worth a lot more than $20B in paper stock printing which is what Nortel did to buy up those companies.

Anyhoo we are on the backside of two orchestrated bubbles by the powers that be. They are still trying to squeeze the last bit of juice from the turnip but there's really nothing left.

Expect a rush to cash when the game is up.

The articles only talks about the executives, board of directors, it doesn’t get into internal issues within the corporation, poor upper and middle management. The article was truthful about the company never finding its way after the 80s - continues to use the old BNR – DMS business models even today, that models was fine in the 80s, but it hasn’t cut it for 20 years. Bottom line Nortel was a old Teleco company, management couldn’t adapt to a changing market or competition, had no idea of where markets or future was going, took the attitude lets see what our competition is doing and we’ll try to catch up years after the fact, couldn’t make decision based on ROI, profit margins, or market share, management took years to make a decisions, extremely slow, or couldn’t make decisions at all. The article should mentions the problems started at the top and ran down from upper management to lower management, and the fighting between the divisions (they never realized they all worked for the same company). It sad to see what management did to that company.

I agree. While our management silos were vital - budgeting, checks and balances, banging them units out then interpreting each number as a "success", etc, etc - projects weren't or couldn't always treated as equals for any number of reasons as they were passed along, morphing from hot to cold and back again. Who was the customer ultimately to cuss but "Nortel" in general?

I'd argue that customers probably didn't mind those few comrades who single-handedly moved their projects horizontally across said silos to meet a common goal, unit count be damned.

(A propos Yogi: The recent cell phone repair gig I had was deja vu all over again in that it was up to me to make the numbers, just hit them units, and ignore all else. Sounds easy - unless, perhaps, you've seen where such strong focus on the numbers usually leads to)

How about Band 9/JCI 6 folks who held roles in businesses (e.g. wireless) that they simply did not understand nor cared to learn about? Trying to run them as they had the legacy business 20+ years earlier. No willingness to learn or to step aside.

agree. what about all the wasted programs on useless products that were turfed anyway? sandbagging by management? taking years to develop product with 2 or 3 times a workforce of startups doing the same thing? all the politics? keeping talent buried instead of unleashing their skills.

This story makes it seem that Z had never informed the board of what was going on...they were blissfully unaware of what he was up to. All of this about him being sad or upset about the outcome is just so much BS. No severance for the rank file....$100k/month for 2 years for him - that is what he feels he deserves. I suspect that in 2005 when he grabbed the CEO brass ring he didn't have a clue about what he needed to do but Plan B was already being formed: liquidation/bankruptcy. Things may have happened a bit quicker than what he anticipated...again showing his lack of skill. Think of the bonuses he missed!

This sob story won't change my opinion of the deZtructor! I'm sure he had a challenge ahead of him when he joined but a real CEO would have done better. I hope he never surfaces again.

Bad CEOs always resurface as CEO of other companies, don't make sense to me, but it always happens, they must take the atitude it wasn't my fault and BoD believe them.