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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.
Soooooooo will they rename themselves Western Electric and merge with AT&T?
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
Cappella: They first tried to work out a merger five years ago, but finally, at long last, it's come to fruition.
From article: Close to 9,000 jobs, or about 10% of the companies' workforce will lose their jobs as a result of the merger.
If I was a marketing person I would definitely try to side-step this fact, unless I sugar-coated it by saying how this makes the company more efficient.
Lucent is a shadow of what it was. They've laid off over 100,000 people in the past couple of years, and are now looking at another 9,000 or so with this merger. Those aren't exactly "world domination" figures.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Accident.
J
$25 billion? That should be good for at least ten thousand layoffs. Middle managers are right now compliing lists of people who just bought homes or just re-financed. Hey, Bob over there just got a new car! Oh yeah, he's out with the first group.
Layoffs for all! Bonuses and parties for the rest! THERE'S CAKE IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM!
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Lucatania, a perfect target for the Germans.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The whole industry is very incestuous. It will save a lot of money from both companies kitty used to lure employees from the other. Don't count this as minor savings either. It was not uncommon at all for Lucent to fly Cisco/Nortel employees from Can to US for an interview at the spur of the moment -- including putting them up in hotel, costs, etc...
I do suspect this will lead to a lot of layoffs however. Do they really need 2 wireless divisions doing exactly the same thing?
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.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Alcatel is making a move that may bite them in the ass. Lucent is not worth what they are paying for it, the entire company is worth maybe 1/2 of that price TOPS. As part of the deal I hope that Alcatel gets to execute Patrica Russo by a great french method of 'off with her head'. The first thing that Alcatel needs to do post merger is sack the entire BOD and any other worthless manager still left on the payroll.
If were a cartoonist, this is the cartoon I would draw.
Frame #1: A fat PHB with the Red lucent symbol on his back, he is screwing an employee with the caption of "It's just business"
Frame #2: A french executive from Alcatel is screwing the fat PHB from the first frame with the caption of "How do you like it?"
The red lucent symbol will always remind me of how my ass felt after the management had their way with me. No romance, no dinner, no flowers, just a royal pounding in the ASCII chart!
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.
Tim Brown
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:
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http://money.cnn.com/services/tickerheadlines/djh
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_i
http://www.e-nough.hmdnsgroup.com/archives/001024
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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.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".