Probably one of the longest and drawn out processes I’ve been watching over the past decade is the über-painful Nortel bankruptcy proceedings. It’s hard to believe the company entered Chapter 11 on January 15, 2009 some 183 days ago. Whew. How the shenanigans of the process have protected bondholders is not entirely clear to me.

I suppose entering chapter 11 with all of the bondholder’s cash in your accounts really helped the management team (if you can call Mike Z. that) have some backbone in negotiations with the bondholders. Nevertheless, despite how the process or non-process (since nothing is really happening it seems) pans out, it seems that the private equity firm MatlinPatterson is going to make solid run at acquiring the company intact. The Financial Times reports that MP is pulling together an array of advisors, composed of former Nortel execs and former telecom execs:

• Richard Burns, former president of AT&T wireless
• Richard Piasentin, former Nortel group VP of sales
• Tony Pirih, former head of Nortel R&D
• Chris Smith, former EVP of Alltel’s wireless network

What’s missing is the question or orientation affecting the Enterprise business. Who’s advising on this operation?

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