The pair, who oversaw the $11.6 billion acquisition of Lucent Technologies Inc. of Murray Hill, N.J., by Paris-based Alcatel SA in 2006, announced Tuesday that they would quit the company.
"This opens the possibility of a change of direction and the instigation of some significant restructuring," said Richard Windsor, a London analyst at Nomura Securities Co. Ltd. "At the very least they need a new CEO who can bridge the cultural gap -- someone who is fluent in French would be a start."
The combined networking equipment maker has never made a profit and on Tuesday announced its sixth consecutive quarterly loss.
Russo was the former head of Lucent and the driving force behind the company's 2006 agreement to be bought by Alcatel. Her appointment to the top job was widely viewed as a political concession to address the U.S. group's sensibilities about being taken over by a French company. -
Paul WhitfieldSee full story on
TheDeal.com
The ill-fated merger that created Alcatel-Lucent has claimed the
jobs of its two principal architects, CEO Patricia Russo and chairman
Serge Tchuruk, who will both step down in coming months. 
