Nortel Exec - Will Consdier Bids for the Company Divisions

Canadian infrastructure vendor, Nortel Networks will give serious consideration to any offers to buy divisions in the company as it restructures under court approved bankruptcy protection.

"We will go through the process of having those discussions," Bruce Gustafson, vice president of strategic marketing for the carrier networks unit, told Bloomberg News in an interview. The company is "obligated" to squeeze the most out of its assets amid the reorganization, he said. The division which Gustafson heads is responsible for nearly half of the company's 2008 revenues.

The public comment confirms a story last month by the Wall Street Journal which had cited unnamed people as saying that the firm is in talks to sell it component divisions to two of its main rival.

The company was understood to have attracted a level of interest in its two core operations - the wireless infrastructure division and its corporate telecoms hardware operations. The network infrastructure division posted sales of US$4.3 billion last year, while the corporate telecoms hardware business generated sales of US$2.4 billion.

Siemens is emerging as a possible buyer for a large chunk of the firm, not just the corporate telecoms arm, but through its Nokia Siemens Networks joint-venture also the wireless infrastructure division.

Nortel's fate isn't yet clear. Concluding that the company is headed toward liquidation "would be very premature," a person close to Nortel said, adding that the sale of the two units wouldn't necessarily trigger a liquidation.

On the web: Bloomberg News - Wall Street Journal

Posted to the site on 5th April 2009