President Bush accepted the recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to not suspend or prohibit the proposed merger of Lucent Technologies and Alcatel. The companies are bound by conditions of a National Security Agreement and Special Security Agreement with U.S. government agencies.
The White House said in a statement that the decision took into account all relevant national security factors, including, but not limited to (1) the scope of Lucent’s operations and its work with state, local and federal government agencies, (2) the globalizing nature of the telecommunications industry, (3) the important research and development being conducted at Lucent’s Bell Laboratories.
Alcatel and Lucent now expect to complete their merger on November 30, 2006, which is within the six-to-twelve-month timeframe originally announced April 2, 2006.
http://www.alcatel.comhttp://www.lucent.com
- In July, the European Commission has cleared the proposed merger between Alcatel and Lucent Technologies. The Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it. The main areas of concern had been in the sale of DSLAMs and optical networking equipment, where the combined company will hold considerable market shares. However, the EC concluded that network operators would be able to sufficiently constrain the merged entity through their countervailing power in bidding procedures that are a characteristic of the industry.