Looks like we've got us a real bidding war on our hands for Nortel's wireless CDMA and LTE infrastructure units. Nokia Siemens Networks is the "stalking horse" bidder with a $650 million deal on the table, but U.S. private equity firm MatlinPatterson has submitted a bid of $725 million, and now Ericsson has jumped in with a $730 million bid (WSJ subscription required). There are also reports that RIM may yet bid on the Wireless units.As Blair Pleasant points out in this post, under the bankruptcy rules, the debtor-in-possession (i.e., Nortel) can accept what it deems the "best" bid, not necessarily the highest in dollars. So any of the bidders could potentially win.
Is this a process we'll see repeated with the Enterprise Solutions unit? It seems pretty likely. Nortel Enterprise Solutions President Joel Hackney told analysts he expects there to be additional bids during the auction phase of the sale, and as Allan noted at the end of this blog post, there apparently have been internal communications at Siemens Enterprise suggesting that they're still considering taking a shot at the purchase.
Bottom line: This thing ain't over.
