Ciena Wants WaveSmith for $170M

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goingoutside 12/4/2012 | 11:58:20 PM

re: Ciena Wants WaveSmith for $170M anyone see this article on Equipe? Looks like the fat lady is warming up. Are they at Supercomm, does anyone know?

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2...

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seen_the_light 12/4/2012 | 11:57:52 PM

re: Ciena Wants WaveSmith for $170M
[url]http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2...[/url]

ABANDON SHIP!!!! ABANDON SHIP!!!!

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alchemy 12/4/2012 | 11:57:50 PM

re: Ciena Wants WaveSmith for $170M Happy_Daze writes:
In an earlier post ruminating as to how come various WaveSmith founders and senior personnel "left", poster WhyIsWhy is WrongasWrong. Guys like Dunn did not leave voluntarily so they could avoid getting locked in following the acquisition. No, instead a number of executives and senior level personnel were shown the door. How many were there? Couple of VP's. A few engineering directors. A Marketing Director (Dunn). Others? One might speculate that this was to make room for the new Tomi guns? Only the current and former insiders and VC's know for sure.

It was simpler than that. An outside director convinced the VC directors that he could sell the company quickly and for a premium above and beyond a Ciena offer that was already on the table. He took over the reigns, fired the executive staff who had built the product and gotten the RBOC contracts that created the value for the company, and replaced them with a bunch of cronies. He then sold the company to Ciena 4 or 5 months later for less than their original offer to the original management team.

The ex-Wavesmithers got to keep most of their stock. A bunch of useless new execs made a pile of money for doing nothing. The VCs look like complete idiots. Moral of the story is that you don't want agressive outside directors on your board and you don't want to get funding and idiot board members from Bessemer, Atlas, and Fidelity.

Burkardt managed to unload Castle on Unisphere before anyone caught on that the product was a disaster. Siemens AG now has the product and is in the process of killing it off. He and his cronies make the 3 Stooges look like a brain trust. They won't be around long.

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whine&cheese 12/4/2012 | 11:57:30 PM

re: Ciena Wants WaveSmith for $170M Your way off alchemy. WSN workers HATE the old management and are mad that the new management gave themselves to much stock for very little work. Bob Dalias and John Ohara raped the company and treated the employees like s$%t. They got fired for gross negligence and mismanagement of the company. Ask ANY WSN person. They gave each other and their cronneys raises and laid off people at the same time, especially minorities. People that didn't agree also got fired. It was the vcs who came in and took out the garbage. Then it was Tom Burkhardt who came in and gave ridiculous amounts of stock to people who didnt do ANYTHING. Listening Burnham? They will all be gone when the deal closes.

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alchemy 12/4/2012 | 11:57:21 PM

re: Ciena Wants WaveSmith for $170M whine&cheese whines:
Your way off alchemy. WSN workers HATE the old management and are mad that the new management gave themselves to much stock for very little work. Bob Dalias and John Ohara raped the company and treated the employees like s$%t. They got fired for gross negligence and mismanagement of the company. Ask ANY WSN person. They gave each other and their cronneys raises and laid off people at the same time, especially minorities.

Hmmm. Sounds like sour grapes from someone who didn't negotiate the right amount of stock when they hired in or was in the bottom 10% when the VCs told management to have a layoff. Or both?

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right_leading 12/4/2012 | 11:07:36 PM

re: Ciena Wants WaveSmith for $170M
WaveSmithers - here's to a prosperous 2004!

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from the press release: "CIENA expects the transaction will be accretive to its 2004 earnings."

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