Alcatel and Lucent to Merge

Cappella writes "It is confirmed. Alcatel and Lucent are combining to form a USD $25 billion entity. This marks a new wave of telecommunications company consolidation in the next few months to come." They first tried to work out a merger five years ago, but finally, at long last, it's come to fruition.

Comments

Now Lucent is a foreign company

[the_humeister]

Alcatel and Lucent had tried to merge five years ago, but talks collapsed.

This time round they had to overcome concerns about security because Lucent does work for the US government.

To smooth the merger's path, Lucent will set up a separate US company to deal with sensitive government contracts.

Well, I guess we can't trust the French either. I wonder why there isn't a bigger issue made out of this considering the Dubai Ports World deal last month.

Re:Now Lucent is a foreign company

[Valdrax]

Actually, this is not unusual for companies that have defense contracts, even with very friendly countries. There are laws stating that companies that deal with classified material and classified projects must be American. As a result, foreign-owned companies create American shell companies to handle all the details that the parent company is not allowed to work with.

My previous employer got bought out by the Swiss, and our Defense Team became a separate corporation owned by the parent company. It's standard operating procedure.

Re: Alcatel and Lucent to Merge, form Voltron

[timbrown]

You forgot "make exceptionally good high end routers". Service routers that can work at layers 2 and 3, excellent HA capabilities that are ideal for building large MPLS clouds. Having had the pleasure of testing these babies, they rock! And they sell pretty well too.

Re:Why?

[fred911]

The french government is as protectionist has it gets. The only level field they play on is one slanted twards themselves. I surely didn't intend to sound redneck. Read more here:

http://money.cnn.com/services/tickerheadlines/djh/ 200603241445DOWJONESDJONLINE000969.htm
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id =5476736
http://www.e-nough.hmdnsgroup.com/archives/001024. html

Re:AT&T

[HoosierPeschke]

which came from Lucent which came from AT&T Technologies which came from Western Electric which came from AT&T. So we're both right.

Re:How long can this consolidation go on for ?

[TheGavster]

Actually, I think it's "allocate workers and resources in the most efficient manner". Apparently Lucent isn't an efficient place to allocate workers to, thus the market has moved them elsewhere.