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Technology Stocks : Nortel Networks (NT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: OrionX who wrote (14250)	11/12/2004 11:11:40 AM
From: upanddown	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14638

The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week By George Mannes Senior Writer 11/12/2004 7:05 AM EST 1. Nortel It on the Mountain We understand the need for shameless self-promotion. But Nortel's (NT:NYSE) latest advertising may be too much, even for us. The Canadian telecom gearmaker Monday launched what it calls a "global branding initiative," one with "sweeping changes to the company's look, feel and voice." Granted, Nortel could use some of these sweeping changes. Certainly, over the last few months, not that many people have been impressed by the look and feel of the voices coming out of Nortel. The problem, as you may recall, is the accounting scandal that evidently inflated Nortel's earnings by $300 million last year -- a surprising "turnaround" that also happened to inflate performance-based executive bonuses. Late last month, the company once again delayed its release of restated results for 2003, saying it still hadn't gotten to the bottom of exactly How Things Went Wrong. So in this context, we were much irritated to watch Monday's debut of Nortel's new ad campaign -- one that features a chorus of irritatingly British-accented kids singing the irritating children's song, "This Is the Way We Go to School." "This is the way we sweep the floor," sing the kids, amid shots of people making money. "This is the way we butter our bread." Eventually, an authoritative-sounding voice comes on to say, "This is the way. This is Nortel." Wow. At a company where executives are suspected of inflating results to get a pay raise, it takes an awful lot of guts to hold oneself up as a model of bread-buttering. At a place where the company still hasn't figured out what its financials look like for the past year and three quarters, it takes even more guts to hold yourself up as the place to go for "helping people solve the world's greatest challenges," as the company puts it. Yes, if Nortel is the Way, you better show us the Way Out.