[Hypertiger]

Pure Insanity...

Buddy can you spare a billion or two...

[Bearwithme]

Perhaps what the canadian govt. is doing is only the beginning of the bailouts we will see over the next few years.

Any chance the same thing is happening by the fed simply throwing some "invented" money here and there (when noone is looking).. to keep deathbed companies on life support a little longer..

[bearometer]

another tidbit about Nortel from Dallas Morning News


http://www.dallasnew...rtel.8b7cd.html

[bearometer]

for those who wish not to register, here's the snippet from Sunday's edition of DMN on NT...


RICHARDSON – In late 2000, Nortel Networks told managers to evaluate and rank all of their employees. Who was bright? Productive? Hard-working? Likable? Such an exercise may be common in business, but it struck many Nortel supervisors as odd. After all, Nortel had been struggling just to fill all its openings. Boom times continued for the maker of telecom equipment even as the dot-coms were going bust.

"We laughed back then: 'Why do you need this?' " said a manager in the company's wireless division who asked not to be identified. "Now we know."

Just a few months after the evaluations went out, the telecom bubble burst, too – and a troubled Nortel began using those rankings to cut tens of thousands of jobs. Waves of layoffs eliminated two-thirds of a workforce that once numbered 94,500 people.

Careers and dreams nurtured in the anything-is-possible 1990s fell by the wayside. In their wake, fear and uncertainty swirl through the Canadian company that has been the physical and emotional anchor for the Telecom Corridor for more than a decade.


In three months of interviews, a dozen current and former workers offered an employee's-eye view of Nortel's U.S. headquarters – shrunken in size, chastened in spirit and searching for direction amid an epic downturn.

Personal fortunes built on stock options went from being measured in millions to thousands. As colleagues vanished, so did the business swagger from which flowed four-figure client lunches, first-class airfare and Alaskan fishing excursions.

Also gone, the current and former employees say, is Nortel's old familial culture, the industry-leading salaries, the golf outings, the team-building.

At its zenith, Nortel employed 9,000 people in the Dallas area, working in sales and research and development on products such as wireless antennas, telephone switches and Internet infrastructure. At the end of 2002, it had 4,730 workers here.

Remaining employees say they regularly clock 12-hour days because their ranks have been slashed without much lightening of their workloads. When they return home at night, some workers trade their day's stress for nightmares. Others can't sleep.

"You worked every day like it was your last day," said Alan Spencer, a sales manager who was laid off in June. "You were working unimaginable amounts of hours. ... I didn't go to the office for the last three months. I was trying to clear as much business as possible, because that's how I got paid. Being in the office is not where you want to be."

Nortel officials refused to comment for this article. A spokesman said chief executive Frank Dunn had publicly apologized to employees a year ago.

"There is no question that events in 2001 caused hardship and disruptions for our employees and also our shareholders," Mr. Dunn said in a conference call with analysts and reporters last January. "The industry correction that hit wasn't foreseen. ... I can tell you personally, and on behalf of the senior management team, this resizing was an experience that none of us wants to repeat."

Employees recount that the company embarked on layoffs with the same mathematical precision it uses to churn out new technology. Managers were often told to dismiss workers they'd ranked in the bottom 5 percent of their groups.

"You could come up with 5 percent pretty easily at first," said an engineering manager who, like other current employees, asked not to be named. "You lose that 5 percent, then you have to lay off the next 5 percent. Pretty soon your bottom 5 percent was no longer your [original] bottom 20 percent."

Each round of cuts divorced thousands of workers from their jobs and devastated survivors who feared they may go next.

"You got people there doing two, three peoples' jobs because they have laid off 60,000 people," said Mark H. Waterbury IV, who was laid off in February 2002.

"I am not really sure if it's worse to be a survivor there. People that worked with me were laid off. People that worked for me were laid off. That's a sickening feeling."

Boom and bust


Nortel's sprawling campus at Campbell Road and North Central Expressway was both the staging ground for the industry's heady 1990s boom and ground zero for the spectacular meltdown that started in earnest in early 2001.
Based in Brampton, Ontario, Nortel has roots that stretch deep into telephone history. It traces its corporate ancestry to Alexander Graham Bell and was once co-owned by AT&T Corp.

It arrived in Richardson's Telecom Corridor in 1978 when it bought Dan-Ray Inc., which sold telephone switches to a fledgling long-distance carrier called MCI. Originally known as Northern Telecom, the company changed its name to Nortel in 1999.

"They were leaders in a number of ways," said Art Roberts, a former MCI executive in Richardson. "They were aggressive and very much, if not in front, at the front in terms of equipment development. ...They were felt anywhere you went in the community."

Among Dallas-area telecom employers, Nortel ranks behind only SBC Communications and Verizon Communications. It has more than a dozen buildings in Richardson, but it's hard to gauge the exact amount of space it once occupied and still controls. The property is not listed under Nortel's name in county records.

In the interviews, the current employees asked that their names not be used because the company prohibits them from talking to reporters. Several former workers also asked not to be named, citing severance agreements. Those who requested anonymity are identified here with first names that aren't their own. All of the full names are real.

A variety of emotions poured out in the interviews: Anger at management for buying into the last decade's irrational exuberance. Fondness for the company. Hope that it will pull through.

Some remain bitter. But most have a nuanced view of what went wrong and who's to blame.

"Everyone knew our top management screwed up. There is no denying it," said a wireless manager who will be called Jay. "But this is what risk is all about."

Tempering that criticism is appreciation for the company's generosity during the 1990s: It offered industry-leading salaries, average raises of 6 to 10 percent and generous helpings of stock options. With the stock closing Friday at $2.31, a mere fraction of its $87 high 2 ½ years ago, those options today are just so much paper.

Workers even praised Nortel's severance packages: four weeks of pay and an additional week of pay per year of service. Laid-off workers remain on the payroll for 30 days after they are notified and can use company facilities a month after that. Many Nortel competitors give laid-off employees significantly less time to clear their desks and have much more modest terms.

Employees also credited managers with nurturing a familial atmosphere. Groups had quarterly team-building exercises at faux boot camps and other locales. Long lunches, golf and other business social events were frequent and widely enjoyed.

"The director or the VP would say 'Whatever we are doing, at 2 o'clock today we are going to go bowling,' " said Mr. Waterbury, whose group maintained and serviced equipment for Nortel customers. "It did build a tremendous camaraderie."

But that bonhomie quickly faded when the first round of layoffs struck in early 2001.

Forget climbing ropes with cubicle mates. Lunch was out of the question.

"There was no way anybody could rationalize taking 30 people out of the office in the afternoon," Mr. Waterbury said.

Witnessing that culture come apart at the seams was overwhelming for Diane Gentile, who left in September after 19 years at the company. She saw her group, which dealt with distributors that sold and installed Nortel gear, disassembled piece by piece.

"This is my company," said Ms. Gentile. "This is more than a job. That's what is so sad about the whole thing. This is our family."