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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (33659)	10/9/1998 10:48:00 AM
From: HB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Oh, I thought you were certain to leave while the tinkle of champagne glasses was still in the air.

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (33659)	10/9/1998 4:16:00 PM
From: Cynic 2005	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Mike, remember I asked you about Susie Gharib, new co-anchor with Paul Kangas on NBR. As I said, she is tough with her questions and she brings better guests than Kangaroo or Seifert (she is no longer the anchor but still works for NBR.) Here is an interview Susie did in June - when NT announced merger with BAY. Judge for yourself. ----- NorTel & Bay Networks Merge SUSIE GHARIB: More mergers today. In the long-distance business, Teleglobe (NYSE:TGO) of Canada is merging with Dallas-based Excel (NASDAQ:XLTC). It's a $7 billion stock swap. The deal gives Teleglobe a foothold in the U.S. residential market, and creates the fourth largest long- distance company in North America. Now, on the equipment front, Northern Telecom (NYSE:NT), the Canadian equipment maker, is buying Bay Networks (NYSE:BAY), the big Internet network supplier. This is a $9 billion deal. A Bay takeover has been in the rumor mill for months. Now, combined with NorTel, the new company will have a jump start in the hot business of providing voice and data on Internet networks. Standing by in our New York bureau are the two CEOs in the deal, John Roth of Northern Telecom and David House, the chairman and CEO of Bay Networks. And let me go back to my first question, Mr. Roth. I was telling you that the analysts on the Street like the strategic move of this merger, but they're very concerned that Bay Networks is a struggling company and why you bought Bay. Can you tell us your reasoning there? ROTH: We don't really think that Bay is a struggling company. Bay's got an excellent technology and under David House's leadership has been making an excellent turnaround. I think the Bay, the Street got rattled during the last quarter when Bay had a disappointing quarter, but I think that one quarter doesn't make a trend. What really you're looking at is a tremendous complimentary of Bay portfolio, its expertise and Nortel's long-term strategic direction. And I think this is going to really strengthen the new company. GHARIB: Mr. House, let me ask you this. NorTel investors today obviously worried about this merger. That stock down by 9 points as we reported earlier. Let's face it. Bay Networks has missed five of its last nine quarters. What can you tell NorTel shareholders of what you're doing to fix this problem? HOUSE: Well, first of all, it sounds like a "good buy" at the price. But, I'm not sure what you're referring to. We had one quarter, the most recent quarter, where we missed our projections. The three previous quarters, we had exceeded our projections. I've been with the company for six quarters in total. I'm not sure what happened before that. But the company grew after a merger from about a billion a year to 2 billion a year. Went flat for 5 quarters. Returned to growth, and we're growing again. GHARIB: The other question that a lot of analysts were asking, and I'll address it to both of you gentlemen, is how soon are the two of you going to be coming out with new products that combine your expertise in voice and data? HOUSE: Well, the great thing is that the products today fit just like a hand and glove. They work together and complement each other almost like they had been a whole cloth and been separated at birth or something. And so we have an excellent set of both product technology capabilities and sales channel capabilities. On the other hand, we will be able to put data technology inside the public telephone network to take advantage of the new change that's been brought on by the Internet. GHARIB: Well, I hope you guys will both come back and talk to us when you had made some progress on the deal. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. And we have been speaking with John Roth, the CEO of NorTel, and David House, Chairman & CEO of Bay Networks.