Avaya wins bidding war for Nortel’s enterprise unit

It looks like enterprise networking firm Avaya has emerged as the winning bidder for Nortel’s own corporate communications unit, with an offer of close to $1bn.

On Monday, Nortel said it has elected to sell the assets of its Enterprise Solutions business, and shares of Nortel Government Solutions and IP telephony unit DiamondWare to Avaya for $900m in cash, with an additional pool of $15m reserved for an employee retention program.

The offer beats expectations of $600m for the assets and signifies that Avaya trumped Siemens Enterprise Communications’ undisclosed offer.

Approvals of the sale will be sought by Canadian and US courts on September 15.

Commenting on the announcement, Nortel Enterprise Solutions president Joel Hackney said: “As we work through integration planning, it is business as usual, and we will continue to focus on supporting our installed base.”