Harper chokes (again)
(there is a CDN buyer here; Harper prefers military-industrial complex & foreign owners)
Courts seen approving Nortel wireless asset sale
Tuesday July 28, 05:20 PM
http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/28072009/323...sset-sale.html
TORONTO, July 28 (Reuters) - The $1.13 billion sale of Nortel Networks' prized wireless assets to Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson (Stockholm: ERIC-B.ST - news) will likely receive the blessing of the courts on Tuesday, although it is not yet clear if it will pass Canadian government muster.
Ericsson won an auction for the key CDMA and next-generation LTE wireless technology assets of Canada's bankrupt Nortel early on Saturday, beating out Nokia Siemens Networks and private equity firm MatlinPatterson...
If approved by the courts, the deal would still need the approval of the Canadian government, which has been lobbied by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion to block the sale. RIM argues that keeping the Nortel technology in Canada is vital to national security....
TECHNOLOGY NATIONALISM?
Canada's leading political parties have waded into the debate, turning the sale into a nationalist issue and questioning how much Canada is doing to support its technology industry.
The minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, potentially facing an election later this year, came under increasing pressure on Tuesday from opposition parties to block the deal...
However, government officials could not say for certain if the Ericsson acquisition would be subject to a review.
On Monday, a source said that RIM, which claims Nortel blocked its $1.1 billion approach for the wireless assets last week, has held talks with Nortel about buying the next-generation wireless patents that were not part of the wireless asset sale to Ericsson.
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Compare:
Nortel now - good engineers, bad managers (offshore types)
Avro Arrow 1959 (PM Diefenbaker kills it- CDN aeronautical engineers go to US-NASA and France)