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Lucent and Alcatel considering merging
U.S. telecom equipment maker Lucent Technologies is currently talking with their France based rivals Alcatel for a potential merger agreement to challenge the domination of Cisco in the world of networking hardware and technologies.
The two companies said in a joint statement that a deal, if concluded, would be “priced at market”. Lucent and Alcatel have a combined market capitalization of more than $34 billion and they have said that the talks are in preliminary stages and there could be no assurance that an agreement would be reached.
These two companies had previously talked about a deal in 2001 but the discussions were discontinued after Lucent balked at the idea of a takeover. Both the companies have lost massive market share to their bigger competitors in the recent times and this time they are pretty serious about coming out with a solution which would make them capable enough of taking on the market leaders Cisco.
Alcatel and Lucent combined could potentially challenge Cisco for the top spot.