Cramer has skin in the game here...a 7.7% position (92,500 shares) in his personal portfolio.
James J. Cramer
Nortel Belongs on the Sale Block
By James J. Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
Memo to Admiral Owens: Do the right thing. Put Nortel (NT:NYSE) up for sale. Right now. Let Alcatel (ALA:NYSE ADR) make a bid for the company. Or Cisco (CSCO:Nasdaq) . Or Tellabs (TLAB:Nasdaq) . Or Lucent (LU:NYSE) . But don't let Nortel disappear. Because this would be the first utterly solvent company -- it has billions in the bank -- to go out of business simply because you can't figure out the darned revenue recognition of stuff from five years ago. That's the type of thing that might be relevant to Nortel's yearbook but irrelevant to all the potential buyers of the company who are watching you wreck it with your alleged precision and forensic work every day.
There's a duty to shareholders, and it extends to protecting the franchise, something that William Owens clearly is incapable of doing. He's promised three times to deliver old numbers and failed three times. He's the biggest serial overpromiser and underdeliverer imaginable.
Of course, the asset itself now is wasting away. I, along with everyone else in the investment universe, think that Owens has no credibility whatsoever and that when we get to the next self-imposed deadline, a ridiculous "month or two" by its own description, we'll just get another extension, until, in the end, a solvent company with good businesses just goes belly-up.
Right now, shareholders look to get zero from that process. The only thing that can be done to save this company is to sell it. Yet nobody's even talking about that.
It's time either for Owens to do the right thing or for the board to wake up, boot Owens and put the shooting match up for sale. Anything else borders on the disgraceful, and everyone knows it. |
