Alcatel-Lucent: We Suck in French and English

July 29, 2008 at 9:37 am PT

Alcatel-Lucent is cleaning house and, frankly, it’s about time. After posting yet another massive quarterly loss Tuesday ($1.7 billion), the company said its chief executive, Patricia Russo, and chairman, Serge Tchuruk, who together led its trans-Atlantic merger two years ago, will resign their positions by year end.

“The merger phase is now behind us,” Tchuruk said in a statement. “I am proud that Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) has become a world leader in a technology which is transforming our society.”

Added Russo, “Our strategy is taking hold, and our results are demonstrating good operational progress. That said, I believe it is the right time for me to step down.”

Apparently, after six consecutive quarters of losses and a brutal reduction in both market share and market capitalization, their work is done.

Tagged with: Alcatel-Lucent, John Paczkowski, Patricia Russo, Serge Tchuruk

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Yang Wang

Pat Russo and Rich McGin are definitely the two of those people who should be held accountable for the problems of Lucent and Bell Labs. I’m very sad to know that the situation is getting even worse. It’s a pity that such a great company ended up with such a miserable future.

To name a few stupid decisions made by them: 1) split Lucent into Avaya, Agilent and Lucent; 2) sold enterprise service unit (INS) and focused on telecom; 3) tried to rebuild a service unit without changing the political culture and organizations; 4) made the wrong decision which directly resulted losing China Mobile account.

These people should have resigned many years ago!

–A former Lucent employee