Ciena to Buy Nortel Assets for $521 Mil.

Ciena Corp. says it has agreed to by the optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets of Nortel Networks’ Metro Ethernet Networks business for roughly $521 million in cash and stock.

Ciena, a telecommunications and network equipment maker, said Wednesday it would pay $390 million in cash and 10 million in common shares.

The deal is a so-called “stalking horse” agreement, or what amounts to an opening bid in a court-supervised auction for the assets.

Under the deal, at least 2,000 Nortel workers, or 85 percent of the employees that work for the unit, would be offered jobs at Ciena.

Toronto-based Nortel filed for Chapter 11 protection in January and has decided to sell itself in pieces rather than restructure its business.

10/7/2009 8:44 AM LINTHICUM, Md. (AP)