So, Who Won MEN?

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While I sit and wait for the final hammer to fall I can't help but laugh that $714 mio could be a big deal to the smarties who've dealt with real money.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Nortel+...

$400 million: How many U.S. dollars Nortel has spent on outside auditors since 2005.

$400 million: The combined amount that Nortel's top five executives took home in salary, bonuses and stock options during the past decade.

$490,000 Cdn.: The approximate amount by which Nortel's value dropped every hour during Mike Zafirovski's four-year term as CEO.

$12.25 million U.S.: How much Zafirovski filed a claim for -- six weeks after he resigned -- for pension, salary, bonuses and other benefits.

26 hours, 43 minutes, 38 seconds: Approximately how long, on average, it took during Zafirovski's tenure as CEO for Nortel's value to deflate by $12.25 million U.S.

$19 million U.S.: How much Nortel paid out in 2003 in bonuses to top managers after the company inaccurately posted a profit in the first half of 2003.

$3.6 million U.S.: How much of that went to then-CEO Frank Dunn.

What fascinating, brilliant facts... utterly damming, objective, crystallizing. Ultimately defines the farcical executive culture that years of hapless directors of the board permitted, led, encouraged... every single individual board member & CEO from & including John Roth's day to now, should be hounded and shamed. And lose their dammed houses....

$366 Billion market cap ...

$20 billion wasted in bad acquisitions

100M shares a year diluted to "keep good people" they said

from 95,000 employees

$4 Billion Nortel Paper printed

no severances but bonuses paid to reward bankruptcy
(they even had to be subpoened to explain why bonuses were paid but severances were not, they didn't want to go)
bonuses under ultimatum like settlement ultimatum where they refused to negotiate pay practices...

Even traded losing options for cash yet again (perhaps to diffuse given board members law firm defends Dunn)

billions burned, many thousands suffered, thankfully... hype, bull, and slander is dead and gone excluding Avaya's no better time to buy or how 9 out of 10 fortune 500;s do...

so many there in this level of mass orchestration accounting for the largest fraud in Canada, who knows what the buyers are really getting...as fraud trials loom on both sides of the border for this Canadian Enron, evil Nortel spelled backwards is letroN

Ciena raises bid for some Nortel assets-sources - to $714 million. Into the 3rd day now. http://bit.ly/4YfGBt

Would be nice to get all these Ciena shares and ride them up to over a $100 like good old Nortel in the 90's. Right proto ? ;-)

I wonder if an all cash deal would be preferred,even if it is lower; given CIEN shares will tank the moment their winning bid is announced.

Not much meat left on the carcass to get anyone too excited, or Nortel wouldn't have folded to begin with let alone had a hard time moving it earlier.

Not much left with this rate of decline. Patents and LG...

Nortel product is forever taboo now for anyone to consider much past their declined and merging customer base of the past that go with anyone but them.

Liquidation theatrics on steroids, going once, going twice, sold to the dizzy gambler with a thin wallet much like they pulled with PEC woth less than half so shortly thereafter. A desperate deal analysts hated from inception and telecom is doing even worse todayl. =) I wonder if their UMTS would be worth as much today, vs. the $300M ALA-LU gave them a while ago.

With any luck, RIM will get the unique LTE patents to continue moving forward as a our only remaining Canadian powerhouse now that Nortel is gone as Palm resurfaces and Apple steps up the battle with more apps.

You know what, an eBay auction would have been a great way to go about this:
- a real deadline
- stalking horse capable
- little overhead cost except for shipping
- avoids layer costs all together...

and eBay charges 10% transaction fee, if MEN sold for 800-Millions, then eBay can grab 80 Milliions, good deal!

Ciena, NSN need Nortel's optical division

Auction continues into the evening

By Bert Hill, The Ottawa CitizenNovember 22, 2009 5:05 AM

The auction of Nortel Network's optical division was continuing late Saturday after reports that Ciena Corp. had sought a break.

Only 2 bidders and all this time ! Yep ! Nothing is simple with Nortel.

''Business made complex'' ''This is the way'' This is Nortel''

A positive way to look at it, if positive is possible is it should be all over by monday.
Somebody else will own MEN lock stock and barrel probably by february or earlier.
What's left?
GSM and CVAS.
Everything else rolled into business services.
Anybody ending up in business services would be akin to waiting in the dungeon
waiting for the hangman at dawn.

What about Passport??

Passport is a chinese nortel entity.
They own it.
Not part of North America anymore.
I suspect it will go into business services or the chinese will
hang onto it till a buyer is found.

Passport a chinese entity ??? Since when ? From what I know, this LOB is managed in Montreal and sub-contracted from Flextronics; partly built in Europe(Poland) and Mexico.

Passport design and ownership was transferred to Nortel-China 3 years ago, LOB managed in Montreal and manufactured by Flextronics in Mexico and Poland. The start of the end of Passport started with the director leaving like 10 years ago, no one to fight for funding, new directors inherited product, no history, not dear to their heart, fought for funding for other dead end products, and the cancellation of the 10G program (10G card with high speed backplane capable of tier 1, 2, & high profit margins, too much competition for the optical 10G program with no backplane tier 1 only, & low profit margins, Nortel’s bad management went with optical). With no one fighting for next generation packet switching equipment, Passport became a legacy product years later, eventually transferred to a low cost centre a.k.a Nortel-China to continue as a legacy product. Passport was transferred under the MEN banner for a short period, but optical didn’t understand, have any interest or want to fight for packet switching, only understand tier 1 and don’t care about anything else, and it certainly wasn’t going to be consider part of MEN during any sell, so product left in Nortel-China.

It is managed in Montreal, majority manufacture in Mexico, there's considerable customer base in NA & Europe .Was interested as it was originally grouped with MEN, Ciena werent interested...now no-one seems to know what is happening with it

The only thing that really makes any money today in passport is the 3G UMTS LOB Nortel sold or gave away to Alcatel because the Directors, executives and management had caused such serious hemmoraging (sp) within Nortel they had no choice. That was the beginning of the end in a stupid futile attempt to make money to breed more inefficiency. One of the LOB's that moved to China was essentially passport. Back in the day Nortel executives made another of many many blunders when they basically agreed to build a center of excellence in China in exchange to have the Chinese sell nortel gear. We all know how that worked out. One of the products that transferred to China and caused North American Nortel job loss was as mentioned passport. Just another victim. The chinese help themselves and used this kind of North American nortel executive stupidity to groom their people for Huaweii, ZTE etc. So let it be written so let it be done.

We are talking about the Passport multi-switch LOB(7K & 15K). This was never sold to China. Still managed in Montreal and build by Flex. This LOB is one of the few Nortel's unit that makes money. Much simplier product then MEN, so I guess, it will get pick-up later in an another auction.

MSS was a much more complex than any MEN product. MEN products are Bits In - Bits Out, single processor per system, low wattage per slots, MSS was packets in, packet disassembly, packet ressembly, packets out, multiple processors, high wattage per slots. The only thing going for MEN was their optical technology other than that their systems are very basic.

That's right and the MEN optical technology right now has no peers. Same can't be said for MSS when compared to the competition and again MSS is now a legacy product.

Bent pins on MSS can be fixed on-site.

As can they on the optical products. It all comes down to having competent efficient indviduals dealing with the problem. Holds true for MSS or anything optical. MSS is the past. High speed broadband delivery whether fiber or wireless is the future. Time to get current.

Fiber works for me.

Incorrect. I guess you have been gone too long. At one time the passport unit otherwise known as MSS was indeed sort of a cash cow on its own and for MEN maybe a year or more ago. It was part of MEN for awhile but was spun out. It was losing its cash cow status and that was one of the reasons it was spun out. It is also classified as Legacy equipment. Data networking has dried up pretty severely especially in the ATM space and people are converting their networks away from ATM which is basically the core of the MSS product line. It was and is a very, very good product but it is not a cash cow anymore. As I said the only people doing okay with it now are ironically Alcatel who use MSS products in their UMTS portfolio. Check your facts. China are the H.Q of Nortel MSS these days. If the MSS unit does indeed still make money it isn't near what it was like even five years ago. It again is basically as mentioned a legacy platform but as you said there is a market requirement for it but the real employment opportunities would likely be support and sustaining of this product since it had or has a large installed based worldwide. The MSS LOB will likely not be picked up in another auction, or auctioned off on its own like Wireless, Ent, MEN, CVAS etc. If it does got that route it will go for under 100 million. More likely it will fold into business services and be divvied up and dissected to various companies as it has been for years.

All I know is that these Passport multiservice switches(MSS 6/7/15 and 20K) have their supply management team and product support team in Montreal. Yes it is a legacy product and for that reason much easier to manage, that's what I meant by simplier product(only a 16 cards shelves compared to these Optical bays with all kinds of different wavelengths, lasers etc). Material wise, MEN is very hard to manage and inventory of components of all sorts was always off the roof.
Hopefully, they will get more than 100 millions for it, we will see.

All of Nortel's products with optics have all kinds of wavelengths, lasers, etc. Material wise MEN is no harder to manage than any other piece of equipment, and in some ways legacy products are harder to mange, because when items become obsolete it can be harder to locate replacements. The problem with MEN supply management was it was really, really bad along with a number of other sections there, they prefer things to go bad, then run around saying, "I'm working on an emergency top priority", "Spend whatever it takes to get the job done","I'm here to save the day", etc that was norm there, which indicates three things, there is a problem with your process, people are worried about their jobs, so they want to say "I'm the emergency, top priority, firefighter that saves the day", or people are not doing there jobs.

I did work on both LOB's(MEN & Passport) while I was working there(more than 25 years) so I know what I am talking about when I say it was much mure complicated to manage MEN. Passport was a piece of cake compare to MEN.

Bent Passport pins can be fixed n-site.

Less, I'm getting the feeling that you bent a pin on an optical shelf and it had quite an impact on you. Optical shelf pins straighten out the same way Passport shelf pins do. The only difference is, on optical, Nortel made it clear that they accept no responsibility for when you screw it up.

Ask companies like Level 3 with tons of legacy equipment, which they can't get replacements for, if the pins can be straightened on optical equipment. ...they can.

lol - aye, a lasting impact indeed. When we installed our first MSS a few pins invariably got bent in the process.
When bent straight they
tended to snap instead, so we laughingly shipped the whole shebang back to wherever quite a few times,

Until the bills mounted. While NT stock tanked.
It was only then "we" noticed that the pins weren't soldered tight and could be extracted/replaced with a little practice. And spare pins.

It is not part of the MEN auction, so I guess it will be sold separately. As you say, these switches are widely sold and probably a nice pick-up for any of the big players in the telecom space.

This is what men look like.

http://www.realclearsports.com/blog/CollegeNerd...

And this is what MEN look like.


http://wwwcache.localtechwire.com/asset/news/20...

Oh, and the stalking horse....

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rFMcObOYhl4/R9oQBDK2p...

Sums MEN up pretty good

Thanks for the laughs!

Something maybe today.
http://ow.ly/163q0s

This whole MEN auction may not be going the way many within the MEN organization had hoped or preached unless there are details we don't understand or haven't come to light. Let's look at the facts and what they may mean. If anybody has a different opinion now is the time to be heard-->>>>>>>>
Auction starts a week later than it was suppose to start.
Ciena keep asking for adjournments, delays or postponements to drag it out over the weekend. NSN aren't asking. Ciena are trying to raise as much cash as they can. Seems like they are scraping as much as they can from all available resources they can muster.
Even though bidding started early friday it is now sunday and this article reports they are only at 700 million.
Obvious both parties are trumping each others bid with the minimal acceptable poker raises probably in the realm of 5 million per exchange.
Seems Ciena are doing all they can do to stay in but seems NSN haven't made a bid to put Ciena to bed so it makes you wonder how bad NSN want it.
Seems like the suggestion the business may fetch around 800 million may be correct.
Hard to expect it would go for over a billion when wireless did barely over that and have larger revenues even though Nortel Wireless likely declining at a faster rate than MEN.
As the World Turns.

If Noika wins, will they get any EDC money?

Hm. Yesterdays Motley Fool headline read:

1-Star Stocks Poised to Plunge: RadioShack?

So I already assumed maybe some insider blabbed about their perhaps leveraging synergies with a recognized leader, but, like Ciena a few days ago, RSH was up by COB yesterday, which could indicate the Shack passed on MEN.

RSH: $19.11 0.31 (+1.65%)

Earlier this year, PatrickDickey expressed concern over RadioShack's shocking prices: "As much as I like the products and services, and am a customer when I need electronic components, their prices are too high."

mpapile also criticizes the company for thinking too small: "Radio Shack has increased their profit the Circuit City way by forcing out higher paid employees in lieu of unknowledgeable lower priced employees. People who are not very good with electronics go to Radio Shack for help, and those that know a lot do not pay $50 for a cable that costs $3 on monoprice.com. So they are killing their core business."

Nortel management shed almost all of its overpaid, dim prole masses, but that didn't seem to work either...
It is remembered that in its heyday Nortel regularly threw the equivalent of Radio Shack in the dumpster seemingly every week, because it couldn't be bothered with storing piddly $3 cables it bought for $50 occupying $1000/sqft lab space.

Another possibility is they are going in increments of 5 million and this increase of 5 million per bid back and forth has kept it alive longer, keeping Ciena in the game.

<<so-who-won-men>>

definitely has an oriental ring to it.... but I hear they weren't interested....

here's the "best" part (and how utterly depressing)...

<<...if Nortel had been able to sell MEN last year ... the entire bankruptcy protection process may have been avoided...>>

If MEN was sold when it should have Ch11 was still inevitable.
No way they could have avoided it given the condition they were in and
the way the BOD, executives, and management had driven it into the ground.
The longer the auction goes on the more likely ciena will win since they
are not able to bid very high one would think.
So the fact no answer yet likely means some foul up or postponement till next monday. Something had to suspend the proceedings, maybe somebody
new tried to weasel in (like the RIM fiasco) and got the boot sending things into disarray. I am sure there will be some kind of soap opera angle to what happened.

Folding was inevitable. Look how fast they went through so many billions they printed. Another billion for MENs sold earlier would not have saved the day.

Telecom also suffers today to have made it run out that much faster.

Ongoing severances, higher interest and debt, almost all their profit at 80-90% EBT nosediving, etc... no plan, etc., t was endless. Who would entertain any sustainability at this catalyzing rate of decline. Even if they were more credible, less risk aversed, motivated, had telecommunications experience while the misleading hype only added insult to injury.

Look at the ultimatum settlement that was followed by restating a restated restatement yet again while prolonging Owens' repair of controls from months to Z-man's years more as SEC finally monitored...all after the largest fraud in Canada where they refused to negotiate pay practices and still paid bonuses even after folding in ultimatum as Manley's law firm defends Dunn and past CEO promoted pals, what kind of culture or credibility was this. Keystone management at its finest short of axe cutting skills that never worked since Dunn.

All axe cutters since Dunn never fared well with not one visionary short of the Garys who abruptly departed, like everyone else there is seems though for different reasons.

They paid customer by giving it away below cost. Verizon even wanted to maintain same prices.

No more hype and bull, no more Nor tell clowns except the few brand new pejorative IDs that agree with each other. They do not like to hear how there were no uncertainties in Nortellesse reiterated "uncertaintly". It was certain all right. Even their very reason for their demise is a lie by these bonus happy juniors now hyping value for stakeholder that shareholder at $20 not so long ago, and no better time to buy than now, how 9 out of 10 top 500 fortune companies still do, etc.. all BS... sooner gone the better.

I suspect that neither bidder wants to go much higher, and they are just arguing about the value of Ciena (or NS) shares vs cash. Nortel executives have driven the value of all Nortel divisions into the ground, don't expect much to come out of this process.

On a related note, Erricson welcomed in their new exNortel employees this week, with what appeared to be a low budget event. Employees got plain white teeshirts with the Erricson logo, If it had been Nortel managerment runing that type of event, i'm sure the cost would have been triple, with fancy golf shirts and a feast. Nortel managerment never learned to us money wisely, which is why they are in the situation they are now. I hope for the sake of Erricson, Avaya et al that they take away the corporate credit cards of the newly acquired execs.

Umm, that is not how it works, but we're here for entertainment as well!

What's your theory on the hold up and inability to get an answer. You don't seriously think Ciena and NSN are running the bids super high do you. It does work like this. All you have to do is bid higher than the opponent. I think the minimum next bid only has to be 5 million higher during these types of auctions.

Look how long it took with the enterpise auction, and the ultimate result vs the stalking horse. Could be a similar situation in play here. Or not.

Maybe they are seeking clarification on specific details that require legal assistance, which is taking time. But the auction only goes forward on the rise of the bid, so if the bid stops rising, the auction ends with the highest bid declared as the winner. It's possible one of the bidders requested a pause over the weekend and will continue on Monday.

You could be right.
Perhaps neither want to go over 600 mill.