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Technology Stocks : Loral Space & Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rocket Scientist who wrote (6761)	9/7/1999 6:48:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

FOCUS-Lockheed says no luck in Loral sales Tuesday September 7, 5:26 pm Eastern Time (Adds background paragraphs 8 and 11-12) NEW YORK, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin said Tuesday it has been unable to obtain assurances that it can sell its stake in Loral Space & Communications Ltd (NYSE:LOR - news), one of the things it must to do to complete its acquisition of Comsat Corp. Lockheed (NYSE:LMT - news) negotiated the sale of its stake in Loral with the Department of Justice as part of the requirements for getting antitrust clearance for its purchase of Comsat (NYSE:CQ - news). In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Lockheed said its plans also involved reaching certain agreements with Loral to assure the sale would be completed in time to get regulatory approval for its Comsat deal. ``The corporation has been unable to obtain these assurances,' Lockheed said in its filing. Lockheed and Loral did not immediately return calls to their offices Tuesday afternoon. One analyst said the filing indicates Lockheed could have a harder time winning Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust approval for its Comsat purchase. ``There's increased risk that they will not get Hart-Scott approval,' said William Kidd, a satellite analyst at C.E. Unterberg Towbin. Kidd said Lockheed holds 45.9 million shares, or 16 percent, of Loral. He said Loral's agreement with Lockheed allows it to approve Lockheed's divestiture of its Loral shares. Lockheed, the nation's No. 1 defense contractor, has said that Comsat, a wholesaler of satellite telecommunications services to telephone companies such as AT&T (NYSE:T - news) and MCI WorldCom Inc. (Nasdaq:WCOM - news), is key in growing its newly created global telecommunications unit. The deal, valued at $2.2 billion, faces a number of obstacles, despite winning approval from Comsat shareholders last month. Besides antitrust approval, the company needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission and an act of Congress that would change existing satellite legislation that prohibits a private company from owning more than 10 percent of Comsat. Lockheed and Comsat have until September 18 to complete the first part of the acquisition -- a tender for 49 percent of Comsat for $45.50 a share in cash. If they do not complete the first phase by the 18th, the partners can extend the tender or walk away from the deal. Lockheed shares closed down 1-5/8 at 35 on Tuesday and shares of Comsat Corp. were down 1-1/2 at 33-3/4. More Quotes and News: AT&T Corp (NYSE:T - news) Comsat Corp (NYSE:CQ - news) Lockheed Martin Corp (NYSE:LMT - news) Loral Space & Communications Ltd (NYSE:LOR - news) MCI WorldCom Inc (Nasdaq:WCOM - news) Related News Categories: options, US Market News Help Copyright ¸ 1999 Reuters Limited.

To: Rocket Scientist who wrote (6761)	9/7/1999 8:21:00 PM
From: djane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10852

Market Strategies: New alliances key to operator plans [Loral Orion news] By David Molony 06 September 1999 Operators' strategic decision-makers have seen their future, and it is in alliances. A new survey of 90 telecoms companies worldwide showed decision-makers expect revenues from alliances to increase from 18% today to as much as 42% in 2010. And among 25 senior executives in those companies, alliances were consistently rated the most effective way to get the strategic advantages those executives wanted for their companies in a number of key activities, including speed to market and access to expertise. In fact, according to the report from New York-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Andersen Consulting, Chicago, alliances were rated as more important in achieving business objectives than organic growth, outsourcing, joint ventures or acquisitions. However, these are not the traditional network coverage alliances that telecoms companies have made in the past. They are more like the partner relationships prominent in the IT sector. "These are different types of alliances that these [telecoms] guys are now talking about," said David Fitzgerald, managing partner at Andersen Consulting. "We will see a lot more in the way of alliances across or outside of the communications industry." Multiple operator alliances such as AT&T-Unisource NV may have folded, and the Global One alliance may be under strain, but other operators are persisting and believe they have found out how to make alliances work. Some operators say they already are developing a new model of flexible partnering to succeed the alliance model based on network sharing within the telecoms sector. "It all depends what kind of alliance you mean," said David Sexton, chief executive, global markets, at Cable and Wireless plc in London. "We are not expert in [Web] hosting technology and services [for example] ... so we will make vertical alliances with companies who are." New "go to market" alliances such as Cisco Systems Inc.'s joint venture with KPMG recognize that the telecoms service provider or equipment provider does not have all the core competencies needed to engineer end-to-end customer systems, according to Andersen's Fitzgerald. Moreover, two important things have changed. The first is that operators think they have found out how to make alliances work better, by more clearly establishing where ownership of operations lies. "Building a worldwide company might be easier than building a worldwide consortium," admitted Michel Huet, executive vice president of Global One Communications SA, Brussels, a joint venture of Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and Sprint Corp. AT&T-BT's joint venture, for example, is being set up as a separate network company. Global One has recently been emphasizing that it is an independent operating company. It cannot change its shareholder structure, but in the last year it has converted its network from predominantly annualized bandwidth leases to wholly-owned IRUs (indefeasible rights of use), which give it more direct control of networking costs. And, rather than buy or build satellite infrastructure to meet demands of corporate customers for digital video broadcast (DVB) networking, Global One has made an informal marketing arrangement with Loral Orion Europe Inc., of London, which recently added such capability when its parent company acquired Global Access Services from Williams Communications Inc., of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The second change is the need to form partnerships with non-operator companies, such as applications vendors and systems integrators. This will also force telecoms companies to rethink the way they manage alliances. "We are going to see a fundamental change ... away from the concept of customer-supplier," said Andersen's Fitzgerald. "[Operators will move] to the concept of getting mutual gain from doing this together and putting together deals to help to do that." Operators already have started outsourcing network procurement to vendors on terms that give those vendors a bigger role than they would have as own-product contractors. For example, BT's Ocean managed IP network for businesses in Ireland will be built by Lucent Technologies Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey, under a novel revenue-sharing contract, details of which have not been made public. Last month, Cable & Wireless appointed Nortel Networks as its network integrator for global network development, starting with the London-based operator's European IP carrier network. Brampton, Canada-based Nortel will manage procurement, installation and integration of the entire infrastructure. "We will see a lot more outsourcing in network management," concluded Andersen's Fitzgerald, "and we will see a lot more in the way of alliances as we move towards next-generation networks." Information : info@total.emap.com URL : totaltele.com ¸ EMAP Media 1999