« And on slide 53…. | Main | My Yahoo..IE Not Invited »
CEOs Expects M&A
By Mark Evans | February 18, 2005
It appears that telecom equipment executives are either regular readers of my stories in the National Post or we're like-minded people when it comes to consolidation in the telecom equipment market.
During the recent 3GSM conference in Cannes, executives from Ericsson, Alcatel and Nortel all talked about the inevitability of industry consolidation as the number of customers shrinks. “It's obvious that this market is going to be consolidated,” said Pascal Debon, Nortel's head of carrier networks, adding Nortel will be “a consolidator”.
The big question remains who has the chutzpah to make a major move…i.e. will someone such as Siemens, Alcatel or Nokia take a multi-billion dollar run at Lucent or Nortel? Jim Duffy has a column in Network World about consolidation, and comes to the same conclusion as myself: Most, if not all of the M&A activity on the equipment side will be strategic moves rather than blockbusters. If the carrier market, however, continues to consolidate, you wonder how long it will take before one of the big equipment makers decides to take the plunge.
Topics: Main Page |