Alcatel shareholders meet on Lucent merger
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Alcatel shareholders flocked to vote on   the French telecom equipment firm's $10.9 billion deal to buy   U.S. rival Lucent on Thursday as executives prepared to take on   harsh critics of the move.
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Network equipment companies Alcatel SA   and Lucent Technologies Inc.  said on  Thursday they had completed their merger, creating one of the  world's biggest suppliers of network equipment for mobile  phones and high-speed Internet communications.
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The shareholders of Ispat International N.V and LNM Holdings N.V. will meet in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, during the early morning hours Wednesday to vote on the merger of the two companies.
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Freshly merged Alcatel-Lucent  is stepping up job cuts to 12,500 after lurching into a fourth quarter loss and forecast a first-quarter sales dip as tough trading and uncertainties from the tie-up take their toll.
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Shares in telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA fell Thursday to their lowest level after the company slashed its forecast for full-year revenue growth in its third profit warning since the start of the year
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Freshly merged Alcatel-Lucent  is  stepping up job cuts to 12,500 after lurching into a fourth  quarter loss and forecast a first-quarter sales dip as tough  trading and uncertainties from the tie-up take their toll.
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The deal follows Alcatel&#039;s April plan to acquire Lucent  Technologies Inc. to create the world&#039;s top telecoms gear maker  by annual sales, and comes years after Wall Street analysts  have called for mergers in the crowed sector.
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Members of the far-flung Bancroft family converged in downtown Boston yesterday for a seven-hour meeting to discuss the fate of Dow Jones &amp; Co., the media conglomerate they have controlled for more than a century, and one key family member said he expects a decision to be reached by the end of the week about Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion bid ...
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(InfoWorld) - Concerns about a spending slowdown continue to make IT investors nervous. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index closed Thursday at 2601.06, down from the 2700 level two months ago. The faltering U.S. housing sector, widespread mortgage payment failures, and related worries about the credit market have depressed share prices since the middle of the third quarter. IT companies, although not hit as hard as businesses in other sectors, have not been immune to the turmoil. A tightening of credit is often expected to dampen business and consumer spending. SoÂ Alcatel-Lucent's Thursday warning about the quarterÂ and the rest of the year struck a nerve, several weeks in advance of quarterly results. The company said it expects to break even on an operating basis in the quarter, and cut its 2007 revenue forecast. It said revenue for the year would be flat or slightly up, at constant exchange rates. Previously, it said that revenue would be up about 5 percent for the year. It was the third time this year the company cut its projections. Its share price dropped $0.88 to close at $9.16 Thursday. Alcatel-Lucent's announcement hinted at what many market observers have been fearing: slowing purchases by North American customers. "Alcatel-Lucent is now seeing a change in capital spending with those (North American) customers in 2007, compared to what it had anticipated," the company said. The company said it still expects ongoing cost savings in the wake of the merger of Alcatel and Lucent, but that did not quiet concerns about the overall market. "Merging may have made sense, but it does not change the marketplace. Demand is demand and that does not change because of mergers," said telecom analyst Jeff Kagan in an e-mail report. A slowdown in demand would make competition in the tough telecom market even more fierce. Earlier this week Alcatel-Lucent rival LM Ericsson said it was gaining market share in Europe and Asia. Ericsson shares rose $0.36 Thursday to close at $36.59. Ericsson's claims notwithstanding, U.S. and European vendors are getting hit with increasing competition from Chinese vendors such as Huawei Technologies and ZTE, which are steadily expanding their product portfolios. Not all tech-sector news this week was grim, however. The notebook market continues to experience explosive growth, according to a report released earlier this week by market research company DisplaySearch. The nine biggest notebook companies saw double-digit growth during the second quarter, while the market, measured by units shipped, grew by more than 24 percent, DisplaySearch said. Although those figures were generated before the third-quarter turmoil, the firm raised its estimate from 97.5 million notebooks shipping in 2007 to 103 million. The true impact of economic turmoil on IT will not be clear until the end of the year. For now, IT investors will try to read the tea leaves, in the form of quarterly results that will start to trickle in next over the next few weeks. Â
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InfoWorld - Alcatel-Lucent has invested in WiMax chip maker Sequans Communications, the latest show of support for the emerging long-range wireless networking technology.
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(InfoWorld) - Alcatel-Lucent has invested in WiMax chip maker Sequans Communications, the latest show of support for the emerging long-range wireless networking technology. The companies did not reveal the size of the investment but said it extends a $24 million round of financing that Sequans raised last year. The companies are both based in France and have worked together in the past. Last year they said they would make a low-cost end-user WiMax device for developing countries. They expect to start production of that product in the second quarter. Alcatel, whichÂ completed its merger with LucentÂ late last year, has alsoÂ worked with Intel, a Sequans competitor. Alcatel and Intel have said often that they would collaborate on the development of WiMax technologies, including field trials of new products. Before the merger, Lucent sold WiMax products using gear from Alvarion, which uses Intel chips. Intel worked aggressively to develop a market for WiMax. Nonetheless, other chip makers including Sequans, Fujitsu, and Wavesat have emerged as competitors. Motorola also invested an undisclosed sum in Sequans late last year. After years of development, WiMax is just beginning to pick up steam. U.S. operator Sprint NextelÂ intends to build a WiMax network, andÂ ClearwireÂ has built several networks in Europe and parts of the U.S.
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Telecoms equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent   lost almost a tenth of its stock market value on Thursday after issuing its third outlook warning this year.
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Alcatel-Lucent opened for business Friday as one of the world's biggest telecom gear makers, signaling a new push into enterprise markets eight months after Alcatel agreed to buy U.S. rival Lucent in a deal worth $11.6 billion.
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ABN Amro shareholders meet to consider the rival offers for the bank as the deadline to decide approaches.
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Dow Jones board members are meeting with billionaire Ronald W. Burkle in an effort to hunt for alternatives to a takeover by Rupert Murdochâs News Corporation.
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Alcatel-Lucent warned Thursday that after talks with North American mobile operator clients about their spending plans, third quarter sales growth was expected to be weak and would &quot;negatively impact&quot; profitability.
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A group of shareholders on Thursday suggested that Vodafone give its investors tracking shares representing the companyâs 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless.