Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP is counseling Nortel Networks Corp. in death as it did in life.
Cleary's Paul Shim, Dan Sternberg and Donald Stern are representing the Canadian telecom company on its stalking-horse agreement to sell its code division multiple access, or CDMA, business and long-term evolution, or LTE, access assets to Finland's Nokia-Siemens Networks BV. Nortel accepted the $655 million bid on June 19, essentially admitting that the phone equipment maker will never make a comeback.
Cleary has represented Nortel since Bell Canada, now BCE Inc., spun out the company in the 1980s and saw it become a high-flying stock with the Internet boom. (A decade ago, Nortel represented one-third of all shares traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.) Shim and Cleary's Victor Lewkow advised Nortel when it paid $7.8 billion in stock for Alteon Websystems Inc. in 2000 and on its $9.3 billion stock acquisition of Bay Networks Inc. in 1998, among other deals.
The firm's James Bromley is representing Nortel on its Chapter 11 filing, while Derrick Tay at longtime counsel Ogilvy Renault LLP in Toronto is counsel on Nortel's bankruptcy filing in Ontario Superior Court. Tay and Michael Lang are advising Nortel on the Nokia-Siemens deal. Nortel's bankruptcy advisers, Terry Savage and Michael Murray of Lazard, are providing financial advice to the seller.
Nokia-Siemens used a team from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP led by Lynn Hiestand and Michal Berkner. Skadden's Scott Simpson landed the client last fall on the recommendation of a European lawyer. Nokia-Siemens also used Sharon Geraghty and Scott Bomhof at Torys LLP as Canadian counsel with Mark Barber, Drew Pascarella, James Peery and Rob Sea of Citigroup Inc. on the banking side.
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