MURRAY HILL, N.J., March 22, 2006 -- Lucent Technologies has bought the assets of bankrupt Riverstone Networks Inc. at auction for $207 million in cash.
Lucent and Riverstone had originally signed an asset purchase agreement for $170 million on Feb. 7, which will be amended to reflect the auction purchase price. Riverstone also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection that day. (See "Lucent to Buy Riverstone's Assets for $170M" ) On March 17, the company announced that Ericsson Inc., the US unit of the Swedish telecommunications giant, had made a cash bid of $178 million for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based provider of carrier Ethernet routers to the telecom industry. That move forced Lucent to up its offer at the auction on Tuesday.
Terms of the Lucent deal are subject to final approval by the US Bankruptcy Court, which has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, March 23. When the deal was originally announced, Riverstone said it expected "substantially all" of its 400 employees to make the move to Lucent's Multimedia Network Solutions business unit.
Ken Wirth, president of Multimedia Network Solutions, said in a statement yesterday, "Riverstone's people and products will play an important role in advancing Lucent's end-to-end converged Ethernet/optical solutions and helping us in our efforts to take share of a growing Ethernet carrier market."
The companies said they expect the transaction to close in early April. For more information, visit: www.lucent.com