Let us not forget that LG and Nortel are in bed with several large investments, one with a name beginning with a "V". LG has lots and lots of money to spend and they've been showing up at parties holding hands quite a bit lately. Don't be surprised if you see LG taking over the meat of Nortel. Being a Korean company, they have loads of money, but they don't boast it as much as their neighbors.
Avaya may have a strong footing with regard to sales and share of the premise systems market, but we are talking about billions upon billions of dollars to even take a bite of Nortel's value. That is a bit much for a privately-held company to accomplish. They would need the help of several outside investors to come up with the kind of cash it would take to pick up Nortel.
Alcatel/Lucent might want a piece of Nortel's central office switching market, but if for no other reason than for the French to own the North American market. It would be a move to snub their noses at us, but probably wouldn't last long.
"The New at&t" might try to pick up some of Nortel, but they can't spend too much since they are too busy trying to show that they aren't making money. It would be in their best interests to try to get some of the DMS manufacturing/support since BellSouth and Ameritech bought so much DMS hardware over the past 25 years.
Siemens is probably the strongest contender in my book. They have already shown that they want Nortel's share of the wireless market and will probably get it. They also have lots of money to throw around for entertainment.
Sadly, I see some Chinese conglomerate coming in and purchasing Nortel. It is happening everywhere you look, so why would a North American icon such as Nortel be any different? They are picking up huge chunks of our markets for pennies on the dollar these days and laughing at us.
Consider the rather unknown bunch from China that bought the Hummer product line. Do you really think they bought it to put H2s on the streets of China? Of course not. They did it to show us that they can and that we were vulnerable enough to sell off an American icon.
While on the subject of American icons, take a look at professional baseball. Once they get their mitts on hot dogs and apple pie, we are done.
