Nortel Buzzboard

As you would expect, there has been a ton of coverage from yesterday’s Nortel news.  Since I obviously can’t include all the coverage, I figured I’d pull some quotes that have shown up in various articles from the last day.

• Multiple news outlets pulled this Mike Z quote directly from the conference call: “The status quo is not an option for Nortel.”
• This Mike Z quote from the call was also picked up several times: “We understand this is a pivotal moment for Nortel.”
• In an interview with Reuters, George Riedel said that Nortel will seek “some form of partnership that would either de-risk the investment or improve the revenue footprint” in the wireless sector.
• In an interview with the Globe & Mail, Riedel said “We need to focus more resources on fewer bets. We are going to do fewer things and do them better.”
• George Riedel also told Bloomberg that Nortel was “in early talks with several potential buyers” for the MEN business (which of course you know from the Riedel Q&A on this blog).
• The most widely quoted comment came from Mike Z’s quote in the press release: “It is clear that the business environment in which we operate requires additional immediate and decisive actions.”

Now for links to a few articles. There is of course coverage from the standard biz pubs, including Reuters, AP, Canadian Press, and Forbes.

Here are a couple of additional articles of interest for you:

• GigaOM: Nortel exits optical, end of an era
• Mark Evans puts some recent financials for the MEN business down on paper in this post.
• Light Reading covers the story from their optical vantage point.
• Telephony Magazine, also a carrier-focused pub, has a detailed article with lots of 3rd party quotes.