Alcatel and Lucent to Merge

Cappella writes "It is confirmed. Alcatel and Lucent are combining to form a USD $25 billion entity. This marks a new wave of telecommunications company consolidation in the next few months to come." They first tried to work out a merger five years ago, but finally, at long last, it's come to fruition.

Would you call this fruition?!

[quadra23]

Cappella: They first tried to work out a merger five years ago, but finally, at long last, it's come to fruition.

From article: Close to 9,000 jobs, or about 10% of the companies' workforce will lose their jobs as a result of the merger.

If I was a marketing person I would definitely try to side-step this fact, unless I sugar-coated it by saying how this makes the company more efficient.

Re:How long can this consolidation go on for ?

[chill]

Lucent is a shadow of what it was. They've laid off over 100,000 people in the past couple of years, and are now looking at another 9,000 or so with this merger. Those aren't exactly "world domination" figures.

  -Charles

Re:Would you call this fruition?!

[HoosierPeschke]

My guess is most of those losses will be on the US side of the merger.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's ok for them to play in our economy but gor forbid we play in theirs!

Cite some supporting facts, because right now you come across as just another right-wing big-mouth jerk-off who licks his own ass for lunch and gets all his "thinkin' points" from neocons and rednecks so he knows "who we's gonna be hatin' this week".

Re:How long can this consolidation go on for ?

[thePig]

Yep. But think about AT&T ..
If any company had anything resembling world domination, it was them.

The irony is that at that time Govt. broke the company up to 7 segments, and now they are trying to survive by merging.

Fall from grace, indeed.

my $0.02 Worth from a former employee of Lucent

[ilove2bscrewed]

Alcatel is making a move that may bite them in the ass. Lucent is not worth what they are paying for it, the entire company is worth maybe 1/2 of that price TOPS. As part of the deal I hope that Alcatel gets to execute Patrica Russo by a great french method of 'off with her head'. The first thing that Alcatel needs to do post merger is sack the entire BOD and any other worthless manager still left on the payroll.

If were a cartoonist, this is the cartoon I would draw.

Frame #1: A fat PHB with the Red lucent symbol on his back, he is screwing an employee with the caption of "It's just business"
Frame #2: A french executive from Alcatel is screwing the fat PHB from the first frame with the caption of "How do you like it?"

The red lucent symbol will always remind me of how my ass felt after the management had their way with me. No romance, no dinner, no flowers, just a royal pounding in the ASCII chart!

Another fish to be fried

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucent and Nortel used to be the big rivals. Nowadays, they're both a fraction of what they once were. The rumour says that Nortel is up for grabs as well. Perhaps Huawei will take ownership. That way they can get some real R&D instead of S&D (Steal and Development).

Re:How long can this consolidation go on for ?

[obarel]

Chicken and egg: what brings profits to the company?

According to some, it's the employees who work hard and produce value.
According to others, it's the customers who pay for goods and services.
Maybe both.

But the merging companies shit on both - employees are fired and customers will not get a better deal (why would they? A dominating company can provide cheaper, worse services, without being afraid of competition - legally they would have to do that, to keep the share holders happy).

The share holders do NOT bring profits to the company - they TAKE the profits, and are still considered number one in the business. That's because they own the business without lifting a finger. So the whole framework is screwed, not just a single business.

A company that controls 90% of the market, after mergers, will NOT provide better service to its customers. It's only competition that is good for the customers. Mergers are ANTI-COMPETITON and are BAD for the market, for the customers, and for the employees.

Talk about protectionism - mergers ARE protectionism, they protect the interests of the share holders and the directors, but not much else.

If a single company owned everything, but employed only 1% of the population, they'd have huge profits and the share holders would be extremely happy, but don't you think the economy would then collapse?

Thinking of employees as customers in other companies makes it slightly clearer - you must make sure that people earn money (and do not depend on charity) for a healthy economy. In a competitive market, it means that people have to work hard to earn their cash, but they CAN do it (i.e., it makes sense to start new businesses and employ people, because you can compete). In a non-competitive market, it can either mean that everybody works, but the market is not efficient (communism as was practiced in the USSR), or that only a small fraction of the population works and the rest are either rich (the "owners" of everything) or they have to resort to begging or stealing (capitalism as practiced in Africa).

Mergers make the market non-competitive. I wonder if you really want the country you live in to be like either of these examples.