Is bid to save Nortel falling on deaf ears?

A group of former Nortel Networks Corp. executives is mounting a bid to save the bankrupt Canadian tech jewel from imminent breakup. However, calls to the Canadian government to delay the sale of any of the company's assets until the group can raise enough cash to buy Nortel appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

The bid to save Nortel comes nearly a year after Frank Dunn, former CEO of the Toronto-based telecom products maker was charged by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with making false entries in the company's financial statements. The charges have yet to be proven to a Canadian court.

"We want to make it clear we're not asking the government for money. All we're asking is that the government not allow Nortel to be scattered to the four winds," said Ian Craig, who once occupied various executive positions at Nortel, including president for broadband and wireless communication and chief marketing officer, his last post before retiring in the 1990s.

Craig is now semi-retired but still serving in boards of various corporations including CAE, a Montreal-based manufacturer of simulation and technologies, and Suwanee, Georgia-headquartered broadband product provider Arris. He is a member of a group which includes, among others, Robert Ferchat, former president; David Mann, former vice-president; David Patterson, former Nortel director; and David Archibald, former Nortel deputy general counsel.

If they get their hands on Nortel, the ad hoc group, dubbed "Save Nortel," intends to build up the company's research and development arms and other assets such as its optical and carrier Ethernet, wireless and voice over IP divisions.

Ferchat said if his group were to acquire the company, it would not necessarily sell off the enterprise products.

"The plan is, if we can get in before the (units) are sold, is to acquire everything that's left and take some time to sort through and see what it is we need to keep to make it a viable enterprise," he said in an interview.

"I don't know what the intellectual property involved in the enterprise business is, and the last thing we really want to do is to decrease our store of intellectual property, patents and cross licenses," Ferchat said. "The current sales process would end up with nothing left and we're trying to have as much left as we possibly can because we think there's a huge and growing market for networks, particularly broadband networks."

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