Once worth more than C$1,100 a share and a third of the Toronto Stock Exchange's value, the telecom titan filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and was liquidated in an accounting scandal, its 6,000 patents sold for $4.5 billion.
Born
1895 CE
Died
2009 CE
Lived
114 years
Dead for
17 yrs
At its peak
~$250 billion market cap; ~1/3 of TSX value (2000)
Cause of death
Overreach
The Obituary
Northern Electric and Manufacturing, founded in 1895, became Nortel Networks, the telecommunications-equipment giant that anchored Canada’s economy. At its 2000 dot-com peak it was worth roughly $250 billion, traded above C$1,100 a share, and accounted for about a third of the entire value of the Toronto Stock Exchange. The crash gutted its market, and an accounting scandal in the mid-2000s forced restatements and executive firings. Burdened by debt and unable to recover, Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection on 14 January 2009 and was broken up. Its prized portfolio of about 6,000 patents sold for $4.5 billion in 2011 to a consortium of rivals.
Worth remembering
At its 2000 peak it made up about a third of the entire value of the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Its patent portfolio sold for $4.5 billion in 2011 to a consortium including Apple, Microsoft and Ericsson.
Gallery
Nortel corporate headquarters campus in Etobicoke, TorontoPublic domainA former Nortel building in Torbay, UKDerek Harper · CC BY-SA 2.0
Watch
The rise of Huawei and the fall of Nortel — National Post
Sources
Nortel Networks filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009 and was liquidated, after the dot-com bust and an accounting scandal Wikipedia
At its 2000 peak Nortel accounted for roughly a third of the total value of the Toronto Stock Exchange Wikipedia
Nortel Networks, once worth more than C$1,100 a share and a third of the value of the Toronto Stock Exchange, filed for bankruptcy protection on 14 January 2009 — the first major technology company to do so in the 2008 crisis — and was broken up, its 6,000 patents later sold for $4.5 billion. Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.
Buried nearby — by shared fate or a neighbouring lifespan.
