Alcatel-Lucent Merger Complete

By Mae Kowalke

TMCnet Associate Editor

 

Alcatel (News - Alert) and Lucent Technologies Thursday announced the official completion of their merger deal, effective December 1, 2006.

 

The deal is complete eight months after French company Alcatel first announced plans to buy its U.S. rival Lucent, Associated Press noted in a report Friday. The $11.6 billion stock acquisition was approved by shareholders of both companies Sept. 7.

 

The new Alcatel-Lucent communications company—with a global portfolio of wireless and wireline services—is incorporated in France, with Paris headquarters. Company stock begins trading Dec. 1 on Euronext Paris and the New York Stock Exchange, under the common ticker symbol ALU.

 

Alcatel-Lucent said Thursday it expects to generate pre-tax annual cost synergies of about Euro 1.4 billion during the next three years.

 

AP noted in its Friday report that “half of the euro1.4 billion ($1.8 billion) in annual pretax savings the partners are promising within three years will be made by cutting about 9,000 jobs, or 10 percent of the combined work force.”

 

Alcatel-Lucent is marketing itself as a global communications solution provider, and as a “leader in IPTV (News - Alert), broadband access, carrier IP, IMS and next-generation networks, and 3G spread spectrum (UMTS and CDMA).” Alcatel-Lucent employees 18,000 service-related employees worldwide, serving more than 250,000 enterprise and government customers.

 

In order to maintain a local focus despite its global influence, Alcatel-Lucent said it plans to divide its operations into four geographic regions: Asia-Pacific, Europe and North, Europe and South, and North America.

 

Within each region, five business groups (wireline, wireless, convergence, enterprise, and service) will provide local support to customers.

 

The company also will maintain a strong focus on research and development. In fact, of its 79,000 total employees, 23,000 are devoted to R&D, including at the Bell Labs facility in New Jersey, USA.

 

Alcatel-Lucent’s newly appointed CEO, Patricia Russo, said in a statement: “Through this merger, we are bringing together two top-ranking companies to form an undisputed leader in the industry, a company poised to enrich people's lives by transforming the way the world communicates.”

 

As part of its official launch Friday, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled its new corporate branding, including a logo that “visually signifies the two organizations flowing into each other.”

 

Of its new logo, the company further explained that it “is a stylized version of an infinity symbol that looks as if it were drawn by hand. Embedded within the symbol is an A and an L. It is both fluid and infinite. The signature color of the new logo is purple, a bold color that symbolizes ambition and is also associated with creativity, wisdom and dignity.”