Alcatel in News

Alcatel and Lucent are planning a merger again (Check the News). This news takes me few years back in the memory lane when the talks happened before. It was 2001, the year of the recession. Both Alcatel and Lucent had descended from the high levels that they had seen earlier and were doing pretty bad. The main topic of discussion in office used to be the fall in share prices of the companies, and how the fall of one of them was much more than the other. The company that fell the most paid it's employees twice of what the better-off company was paying. I'm still not sure if they planned a merger or a take-over then. But the end result was the calling off of the merger with rumours that Alcatel demanded more people in the management than Lucent, while Lucent looked at it as a merger of equals.
Anyways, things are different now. The economy is booming and so is the telecom sector. Alcatel is posting good results and Lucent is also improving. This seems to be the period of mergers and acquisitions and this deal might also happen.

A coincidence - I came across another news article on Alcatel today. Alcatel has got a contract from BSNL. But the interesting part of the news comes from the statement,

"BSNL has made it mandatory for the bidders to set up a local unit either on
their own or through contract manufacturers who already have a base in
India"

Once again, this reminds me of the past - 2002 to be specific. It was then that Alcatel started "Alcatel Shanghai Bell". According to the company's website,

"Alcatel Shanghai Bell is the first foreign invested company limited by
shares in China’s telecommunications industry. It was born through the
integration between the former Shanghai Bell and Alcatel’s key business units in
China."

Back then there were apprehensions in the Indian unit of Alcatel that A-S Bell was set-up to take advantage of the cheap Chinese labour, which might result in layoffs in India. The fears were allayed by the news that A-S bell targeted only Chinese clients and was setup because there was some rule that the Chinese contracts could be given only to companies that had some base in China. Now, does that sound familiar?