

Nortel files for bankruptcy - mixmax
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090114/bs_nm/us_nortel_4

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Caligula
I am sad for Nortel. I did an unpaid internship course in high school at
Nortel which was a great experience and best of all, at the end I got 300$
bonus. This was in 1999 back when Nortel was on top of the world. They were
the company people wanted to work for in the Ottawa area.

They were a real company before the hi tech boom and were corrupted by it.
They suffered a decade of poor management that saw them through stock options
scandals, accounting restatements, and general stupidity. I remember spending
half the money I earned one summer on Nortel stock after the bubble popped
figuring Nortel was at ~50$, they cant go any lower.

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gamble
Sad, but not unexpected.

I went through a year-long internship program as part of my CS degree, during
the period in late 2000 and 2001 when the bubble burst. Nortel sucked in more
people from my class than any other employer. Since they had to agree not to
lay off students, interns were often the only ones to survive the early
layoffs. There were people who watched their entire department fired several
times over.

It made for some interesting stories, but not a lot of people who wanted to
return after graduation.

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fallentimes
_In mid-2000, at the zenith of the company's success, they were worth more
than C$1,100 each, adjusted for a stock consolidation that took place in late
2006._

Wow, what a free fall.

~~~
iigs
_"It's obviously a remarkable transformation from where it was as the largest
company in Canada worth about 35 percent of the TSX in 2000," said Gavin
Graham, director of investments at BMO Asset Management._

Wow, indeed! Over one third of the entire value of the Toronto Stock Exchange
during the bubble. I don't know much about the business aspects of Nortel, but
I bet they'll be subject of many b-school case studies.

