John, I gather you and others are disappointed with the price paid for Bay.
As a long term shareholder, I have seen for some time that Bay needed to grow in order to survive. Cisco is dominant in networking, and then there is everyone else.
But more importantly, with the convergence of LAN, WAN, and Telephony, the companies that will survive and prosper are those big companies which can offer one stop shopping. I.E. Lucent, Nortel, Cisco... Ascend and Tellabs are large profitable niche players at this point.
Bay needed Nortel more than Nortel needed Bay. But Nortel did need Bay. I do not think Bay would survive and prosper long term (and maybe not short term), and would not reward us shareholders on its own.
I believe that Nortel has good management that gets better with House, and that Nortel will (continue to) be a more formidable one stop shop competitor for Cisco and Lucent.
The only way I could be disappointed with this is if I was looking to make a quick buck on the sale of Bay. As a long term investor, I think it was a good move at the best price House could get. wj |
