The long, sad fall of Canada's corporate giant

National Post ^ | January 15, 2009 | Theresa Tedesco

[Loyalist]

Ten years ago when the stock price of Nortel Networks Corp. swirled in the heady heights of $124 a share before it was massively diluted, cheeky financial analysts would ask senior executives of Canada's then-most valuable company if, or when, they envisioned it would ever go bankrupt. After some jocular provocation, the response was pure bravado, "when hell froze over."

Wednesday, in the midst of an Arctic blast of cold air that has cast half of North America into a deep freeze, Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States and Canada.

That Nortel finally staggered under the shelter of bankruptcy is not the least bit surprising. Once a national source of pride, the 113-year-old manufacturer of telecommunications equipment had become, sadly, an embarrassment. In its heyday, Nortel was as important to Canada as Research in Motion Ltd. and the BlackBerry device is today. These days, it had become the former Canadian champion threatened with delisting by the New York Stock Exchange because its stock price had fallen below US$1.

[Spktyr]

Nortel’s phone systems may be okay, but their VOIP and IP products are garbage.

[Renkluaf]

Just bury the cadaver and move on!