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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bob zagorin who wrote (21040)	5/29/2000 1:26:00 PM
From: James Fulop	Respond to of 42804

Could this affect MRVC Tuesday? >>Lucent Set To Pay $5 Bln To Acquire Chromatis - FT Dow Jones Newswires May 28, 2000 interactive.wsj.com. TOKYO -- Lucent Technologies (LU) is expected to announce within days a deal with Chromatis Networks, enabling it to break into the fast-growing optical networking business, the Financial Times reported in its Monday international edition, citing sources close to the deal. The world's biggest telecommunications equipment maker is poised to pay around $5 billion in stock for Virginia-based Chromatis, which produces equipment that increases the speed of the local communications networks covering metropolitan areas, the FT said. "Chromatis provides the ability to virtually expand the capacity of the fiber-optic metropolitan network," the source said, as quoted by the FT. This is set to be a big growth area, as most investment in optical technology so far has taken place in long-distance communications 'backbones.' The deal with Chromatis would be a boost for Lucent, which has fallen behind rival Nortel (NT) and specialists such as JDS Uniphase (JDSU). Cisco (CSCO) is also focussing on optical networking as its most important new area of expansion. Optical networking is one of the few hot sectors on Wall Street at a time when technology stocks are declining. A weak IPO market is expected to get a boost this week with the arrival of ONI Systems, an optical company which has raised the indicated price of its offering from $14-$16 a share to $21-$23 a share, according to the FT. The Chromatis deal marks a big achievement for Israel's rapidly growing venture capital industry and high-technology start-up sector, the FT said. Chromatis has most of its research and development expertise in Tel Aviv. About 100 of its 160 employees are in Israel. Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), an Israel-based venture capital fund, was the lead investor in Chromatis. The group manages about $250 million in three funds, and is backed by investors such as Boeing, Invesco, Merrill Lynch and France Telecom, the FT said. JVP holds about 15% of Chromatis, which raised $50 million in two rounds of private financing, the FT said.<< Message 13792866