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Carly Fiorina may come from the executive suite, but that hasn’t stopped other executives from slamming her record. The latest critique comes from Steven Rattner, a former Wall Street banker and private equity executive. Rattner, in an opinion piece in the New York Times on Saturday, called Fiorina’s time as the CEO of HP “short and disastrous.” Rattner said HP’s acquisition of Compaq, pushed through by Fiorina, caused an amount of divisiveness at the company that Rattner says he never saw in his 33-year career on Wall Street. He said that while Fiorina did serve during a tough period for...

That Carly Fiorina was a one-woman wrecking crew during her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard was never in doubt. But what follows is a tale that is now being picked up and distributed as the Republican Party seeks a nominee who combines business savvy and executive know-how. Sadly, the former executive who most closely fits this particular bill also has exhibited the kind of corporate arrogance and blind certitude that came close to sinking what had been considered among the world’s best technology companies: Hewlett-Packard. At HP beginning in the mid-1990s, Fiorina was responsible for the ill-fated merger with Compaq,...

A comparison of the tenures is a battle of bad vs. worse. It’s well known by now that GOP presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina has never held political office and is running on her business record. As many commentators have pointed out, that’s a dicey proposition since her highest-profile job as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005 was sort of a disaster.But in an interview with Fortune contributor and Yale School of Management professor Jeffery Sonnenfeld, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump—who has made a habit of criticizing Fiorina—took aim at a different stage of her career.When asked about what he thought...

The US treasury department has eased sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Sudan to help further the use of web services and support opposition groups. US technology firms will now be allowed to export online services such as instant messaging and social networks. Companies had not offered such services for fear of violating sanctions.

TORONTO - Swedish telecom giant Ericsson won the auction for Nortel's wireless division, with a bid of US$1.13 billion, the Canadian-based company announced late Friday. Nortel will seek Canadian and U.S. court approvals of the proposed sale agreement at a joint hearing on July 28, 2009, the financially troubled company said in a statement.

In a move that would end one of Canada's oldest and greatest business sagas, Nortel Networks Corp. is looking to break itself up by selling off major divisions rather than trying to rebuild itself under bankruptcy protection. The company is fielding offers from potential buyers who are interested in purchasing both its wireless-gear business as well as a separate division that manufactures office telecom equipment. Together, those two divisions posted $6.7-billion in revenue last year, or more than half the company's sales. Any plans to sell the wireless-equipment business, which generates the bulk of the company's sales, would make it...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Nortel Networks plans to cut its work force by 3,200 jobs worldwide. The Canada-based telecom equipment maker said the new round of job cuts will be made over the next several months. The reduction is on top of 1,800 job cuts already announced...

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...

Nortel Networks Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States on Wednesday, one day before it was due to make a $107 million interest payment. The Toronto-based company and several of its affiliates made the filing in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. The move came shortly after the Nortel's shares were halted on the TSX. According to The Globe and Mail, Nortel is also expected to file for bankruptcy protection in Toronto. "Bankruptcy protection keeps the creditors at bay while you reorganize or sell parts of the business," BNN's Michael Kane reported Wednesday. The company's board of...

With engineering help from half a dozen Western firms, the Chinese Communist Party has erected a huge apparatus to censor free speech. A ragtag crew of hacker dissidents may succeed in tearing it down.In a windowless room in New York City, a computer engineer with owlish glasses--call her “Jenny Chen”--peers at a color-coded bar graph on her PC screen. Her group is launching attacks on the Chinese wall of censorship that blocks access to sites discussing verboten topics like civil rights and democracy. The graph displays how many Chinese that month evaded the country’s censorship to condemn the Chinese Communist...

A couple of columnists in the Sun chain of newspapers, Peter Worthington in Toronto, and Ezra Levant in Calgary, have taken pot-shots at Microsoft, the giant American software company. Apparently, Microsoft’s sin is that it won a large contract with the Chinese government to provide software that would control the language content used on individual blogging sites in China. Certain words are zapped, including "freedom, democracy, and human rights." Also on the bleeped list are specific political references, such as "Dalai Lama" and "Tiananmen Square", as well as a number of sexually graphic words and phrases.

Nortel has invested US$10 million in Sasken Communication Technologies Limited, an Indian company specializing in telecom R&D outsourcing. Sasken has been a supplier to Nortel since 1991 and is currently focused on supporting Nortel's GSM and enterprise communications solutions. Sasken will also play a major role in training, technical support and other engineering services in Nortel projects in India. Sasken employs over 2,000 staff and has facilities in Bangalore and Pune, India and has offices in Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Sweden, France, the UK and the U.S

San Jose will save millions of dollars, getting a substantially more robust computer network at a lower cost after city leaders were forced to fairly bid a contract that had improperly favored Cisco Systems in the new City Hall. The city council in August was forced to rip up and start over with the $8 million contract after a Mercury News investigation exposed apparent favoritism toward the company and a subsequent city audit revealed San Jose had gone so far as to let the company write the list of 18,000 Cisco parts the city would buy. The new low bidder,...

Shall we call the corporate roll of honor? There's Nortel, which invented for the Chinese government an Internet surveillance mechanism "specifically designed 'to catch Falun Gong.'"...Google has helpfully omitted all PRC-banned sites from its search service. From its search service in China, that is. What you can find via Google in Peoria--or Kobe--you can't find in Beijing. Google has bowed to the Communist rulers.

Celebrating 80 Years with Shimon Peres "The Marking of Peres' 80th Birthday is an opportunity to look forward with the man who has his feet firmly planted on the ground as his vision sails to the future." THE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE OF PERES 80 -------------------------------------------------------- THE OFFICE OF SHIMON PERES AND THE PERES CENTER FOR PEACE Contact: YORAM DORI - Beeper: 972-3-610-6666 code: 45544 YAEL LOTAN - LOTAN COMMUNICATIONS E-mail: lotan@lotan.org.il ALIZA GOREN E-mail: aliza@gorenco.co.il JOEL LEYDEN - LEYDEN COMMUNICATIONS (Israel) E-mail: media@leyden.net LINDA RIVKIND - Government Press Office E-mail:lrivkind@netvision.net.il WHY A BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR SHIMON PERES? Tel Aviv----September 20……The Israeli...

Nortel gets $1B government boost Export Development Canada offers line of credit to bolster stock price Nortel Networks Corp., still struggling to stabilize its finances during a protracted slump, has received a billion-dollar safety net from the federal government. The Brampton-based maker of telephone gear revealed yesterday that Export Development Canada -- a controversial lending agency -- has agreed to provide the company with a credit line worth as much as $750 million U.S. Nortel also provided details of a plan to cancel some 3.8 billion outstanding shares. At its annual general meeting in April, the firm plans to ask...

From $80 to 80 cents a share - NORTEL is rated a "SELL" at $0.80... -- A class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday accused Nortel Networks of overstating its revenues in late 2000 and early 2001, when the fiber-optic and telecom equipment giant first said it would fail to meet growth targets. The lawsuit filed on behalf of three Ontario residents by the Toronto law firms Lerner & Associates and Rochon Genova names Nortel and its auditor, Deloitte & Touche, in alleging the kind of fraud that has shaken investor confidence in the United States after scandals involving Enron Corp., WorldCom Inc....

Beijing Developing Electronic Chains to Enslave Its People For nearly a thousand years the Great Wall of China protected the Asian empire from foreign invasion. Today, red China is installing a great "firewall," hoping to stem the tide of foreign ideas from invading the authoritarian one-party state. Despite claims to be an open society, China has an extraordinary fear of free information. For example, when President George Bush recently visited the Shanghai economic conference inside China, the communist government removed blocks on the Web sites of several U.S. news services. Immediately after President Bush left Shanghai, the paranoid red forces...