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

To: Jack Whitley who wrote (59781)	2/6/1999 2:20:00 AM
From: H.A.M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 61433

John Chambers' comments on Mory and the ASND-LU deal The following are excerpts from an interview with J. Chambers (CSCO) in the latest issue of Investor's Business Daily (dated Monday, Feb. 8, 1999): IBD: What's your take on Lucent Technology Inc.'s plan to buy Ascend Communications Inc.? Analysts say Lucent bought Ascend for the technology it got from its purchase of Cascade, to respond to technology you got from your purchase of StrataCom. Chambers: We bought StrataCom for the WAN (wide-area network) and ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) capability. Lucent bought Ascend both for that and the dial capability. The challenge is that Lucent has to fill in a bunch more gaps. Almost all acquisitions and mergers in our industry fail. Cisco's the only one that's been really successful in this. Also, most of the key people with an acquisition are gone within two years. Mory (Ejabat, Ascend's CEO) did a very good job of managing that company, but the top management out of Cascade has been long gone. Now, Mory won't stay retired, because he's really good. I just hope next time he's a partner, not a competitor. IBD: Do you want to offer him a job? Chambers: Oh, he's too rich. But I'd love to lure him as a partner. The point I'm making is the top management is all gone from the original Cascade-Ascend group. Lucent has got some challenges. I would not have had the courage to (buy Ascend).