Monday, March 27, 2006

Lucent Alcatel Merger

The same story was on the headlines when Lucent was probably at its lowest. And then I was a part of Lucent. And at that point of time, I was totally against Alcatel Buying out Lucent. Finally the deal didnt took place. I was happy . But yes there were a huge layoff's that followed. It was a nightmare of every person who was working out there.

Today , the story repeats again. Again there is a news/rumour that Alcatel is buying out Lucent. I do feel sad about the whole issue. More so, because Lucent and Bell Labs have been the Pioneers in the Telecom industry. The company who first invented the Transistor, the OFC's .. and soon it may be that these huge company no longer exists. Well, it doesnt sound good to me, especially after working for this company.

The deal is supossedly for $34 Billion. thats only what the bank balance is going to get affected.
I dont know how the US govt is going to take it. As most of the classified work of US govt is done by Bell Labs and they wouldnt want some Europeon company to be the onwer of the same.
Bell Labs was once the pioneer in R&D . It no longer remains the pioneer. But Still Alcatel would love to leverage the plus points that Bell Labs has been enjoying over the years.

Also there is a lot of overlap in the products between the two companies. Hence there would be a urgent need to remove the redundancy . Which would also mean a huge layoff. Most probably it will be the Lucent Staff or rather the US which will be affected due to this..

Now all that remains to be seen is , whether this goes ahead, or it is going to be a reharsal of the last merger that was supossed to happen. For some reason, I feel that this deal will go through, but personally I dont want this to go through!!