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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William F. Wager, Jr. who wrote (57123)	11/12/1998 9:14:00 PM
From: Pat Hughes	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 61433

"Ascend Brushes Off Lucent Merger Rumours" Article in the London Financial Times dated 11/12/98 <Ascend Communications poured cold water on the rumours that it might merge with Lucent Technologies, its larger rival in the market for data networking and telecommunications equipment. Micael Ashby, chief financial officer, said Ascend intended to be "one of the survivors" in the rapidly consolidating industry. He forecast that in three to five years there would be just four big American suppliers to telephone companies - Lucent, Nortel, Cisco and Ascend. Ascend has long been rumoured as a takeover target for Lucent, which is keen to build rapidly the data communications side of the business. The two companies are believed to have had talks - described by one of the participants as "informal" - that recently cooled. However, people close close to the talks held out the prospect of them restarting, despite Mr Ashby's comments. One analyst said "companies may say they will not sell out, but when the price is more than right then everyone is a willing seller". Mr. Ashby said a deal would make sense for Lucent but that it would be a "big mistake" for Ascend to follow any course other than independence. He added that the "cultural differences would clearly be a problem" in any link-up. Lucent formally of AT&T, is one of the oldest suppliers of traditional telephone equipment. Ascends background is in data networking equipment for linking computers. Telephone companies now want systems that can handle both kinds of traffic, forcing consolidation in the industry. However, cultural differences between traditional telephone equipment companies and newer data communication companies, such as Cisco and Ascend have been a barrier to consolidation. Such differences were blamed for the failure of talks between Cisco and Lucent last year. Mr Ashby said further consolidation was necessary and added that Ascend was keen to to make further large acquisitions once it had dealt with its recent 800m acquisition of Stratus Computer. He said the company's ability to integrate large acquisitions was one of its key strengths.> ANY COMMENTS? Pat Hughes