Avaya, Siemens to fight over Nortel enterprise business

Two bidders have tabled offers for the enterprise networking business of collapsing Canadian kit vendor Nortel, ahead of the auction scheduled for Friday.

US-based Avaya, which plays in the enterprise networking space itself, recently entered a bid of $475m for the unit, which includes the Nortel Enterprise Solutions voice, data and government systems businesses. But it has since emerged that Siemens has also tabled a bid with an eye to adding Nortel’s division to its own enterprise communications portfolio.

There is some speculation in the industry that the auction could raise in the region of $600m, now that there is competition for the asset.

At the end of July, Nortel offloaded its CDMA business and LTE Access assets to Swedish vendor Ericsson for a total of $1.13bn. There has also been plenty of speculation that the firm is planning to sell off its 50 per cent stake in Korean joint venture LG-Nortel, in which it is a partner with local manufacturer LG Electronics, for anything up to $1bn. And it is also thought the company is still considering the sale of its crown jewels—its Metro Ethernet unit, which it took off the market in February. Nortel has only said that it is in advanced discussions with other parties with a view to selling other parts of its business.