Exit Nortel

Farewell Nortel. We hate to see you -- but not your overpaid CEO -- go.

The 127-year-old Canadian telecommunications company and one-time global powerhouse has chosen to sell itself off in pieces rather than rise from bankruptcy as a restructured company. Nokia Siemens Networks said Saturday it will buy the most lucrative part of Nortel's carrier networks division in a $650 million deal. The asset sale to the Finnish-German joint venture, which is subject to an auction if a higher bid emerges, is just the latest in a slew of liquidations at the humbled equipment maker.

Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski said an interview with the Associated Press that the company is in advanced discussions with multiple companies for each one of its remaining assets. If the company is successful in getting decent prices for its parts, said Zafirovski, then Nortel as we know it "will no longer be here in the future."

To be honest, it's been a while since we've noticed the company anyway unless it's on the losing side of a battle with Cisco (Stock Quote: CSCO) or Alcatel-Lucent (Stock Quote: ALU).

Nortel, which lost $507 million in the first quarter, still employs more than 25,000 people around the world. That's a sizable amount, but well below the nearly 100,000 workers it boasted back during the Internet boom. Nortel accounted for nearly a third of the market value on the entire Toronto Stock Exchange at one point in 2000. In a dramatic fall from grace, Nortel said Saturday it will ask to have its shares delisted in Toronto.

"This is not the path which we worked so hard to get to," added the CEO who sought bankruptcy protection in January.

Clearly not. And it's also not what Nortel shareholders had in mind in October 2005 when they forked over $11.5 million to Zafirovski's former employer Motorola (Stock Quote: MOT) to settle a lawsuit that allowed him to come aboard. The company justified the expense because of Zafirovski's role in turning around Motorola's handset business.

It all worked out much better for Zafirovski than Nortel. He earned a base salary of about $1.2 million in 2007 plus a boatload of perks and options, even though the company lost nearly $1 billion for the year and its shares fell 55%.

Motorola and Zafirovski will live to see another day. Nortel, however, is no more.

Dumb-o-meter score: 75 -- Don't blame Canada. Blame Zafirovski.

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