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Technology Stocks : Newbridge Networks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Praxis who wrote (7034)	10/17/1998 8:41:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18016

GTE has owned and does own more of BCTel than current Canadian Law would permit. (The same was true with ATT&BCE, but that's a different and longer story.) Its ownership rights has been grandfathered. I believe it has 52% of BCTel, but it may be 48%. That shouldn't be too difficult to find out if you're curious. If the Telus Merger ends up with Telus owning GTE's portion of BCTel, there would be no violation of Canadian Law. ... and GTE has been widely rumoured in recent months as being eager to sell its stake in BCTel. It's conceivable that the Telus leak was intended to provoke a serious bid by BCE. The Telus / AT&T merger was between Telus and AT&T Canada. AT&T Canada is the rescued carcass of the nearly bankrupt remains of CNCP Communications, which was renamed to Unitel. The original partners CN, CP then Rogers essentially wrote off their investments, decided to quit throwing money down that bottomless pit leaving the Canadian Chartered banks holding the bag. ... at which time AT&T came in to rescue Unitel and renaming it AT&T Canada. I forget the precise ownership and voting arrangements, but the Banks now have equity positions rather than loans and AT&T has an equity position but not all the votes that would otherwise be warranted. The Canadian Regulators had the choice of eliminating most competition in Canada or approving the rescue arrangement. Again, if Telus bought AT&T Canada, the Banks would be overjoyed to get some money back, AT&T probably wouldn't be too disappointed, and the Regulators (CRTC) probably would be overjoyed to see the company back in Canadian hands. I have no idea why the merger discussions fell through but it was rumoured that contractual commitments with Stentor would have imposed unduly onerous penalties on Telus had it become a competitor with its Stentor partners. And I'm completely unaware of any link between any of the above and NN or NNC. FWIW, Ian.