Ericsson’s deal for Nortel very much alive

It is far too quiet on the Ericsson / Nortel / Research In Motion front. No move at the Court of Appeal, no media leaks, no scrums, no industry lobbying, no evidence of any activity on RIM’s part to create a “Canadian solution” for Industry Minister Tony Clement to consider.

This cannot be good for those of us who were so certain that the Federal Government would find a way to spirit Nortel’s LTE assets into RIM’s hands (see prior post “Ericsson’s deal for Nortel is DOA” July 28-09). They blocked the MDA division sale, after all, which is less integral to Canada’s Innovation Economy than Nortel is.

My theory was that if RIM would make the lenders whole relative to Ericsson’s purchase price, Minister Clement would be hard pressed to let the LTE patents escape Canadian ownership. The fact that Nortel claims to have “only licenced” the patents and not sold them was a nice finesse, but it was too transparent to decide the issue. As is the silly argument that the patent’s book value figure is too low to warrant Federal review (see prior post “Nortel’s “Alice in Wonderland” math” August 19-09).

The lack of any noise, whatsoever, can only mean that I was wrong. Sorry, readers, you get what you pay for here sometimes. Ericsson looks to be well placed to win the day.

MRM
(disclosure – I own RIM)