Lucent fiber unit to be sold for lower price

NEW YORK: Telecommunications equipment giant Lucent Technologies Inc is

likely to sell its fiber-optic business for less than an originally agreed price

of $2.75 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition

on Thursday.

The paper, monitored in New York, said that Japan's Furukawa Electric Co,

CommScope Inc and Corning Inc, which agreed in July to buy the unit, are in

talks with Lucent about cutting the price by 10 per cent.

But a specific sum has not yet been determined, the paper said. A Furukawa

spokesman in Tokyo said that negotiations were continuing ahead of the deal's

latest deadline set for Friday.

Furukawa and CommScope, a US high-speed broadband access cable maker, said

last month that they were in talks to restructure their joint venture

arrangement to operate Lucent's fiber-optic cable division.

Corning was set to take Lucent's interests in two Chinese joint ventures and

Commscope was to pay $650 million to enter into one or more joint ventures to

operate parts of the newly acquired unit. But the structure of the deal is also

being changed to give CommScope a far smaller role, the Wall Street Journal

report said, quoting people familiar with the talks.

The paper said a Lucent spokeswoman declined to comment other than to say the

deal "is on track". CommScope declined to comment, and a spokesman for

Corning declined to comment about the price, the paper said.

Furukawa on Thursday announced that it had extended the deadline to November

16 from the end of October. It had already been extended from the end of

September.

Furukawa, which will announce interim results next week, closed 6.14 per cent

higher on the Tokyo Stock Exchange at 709 yen in a broad rally that lifted the

Nikkei 225 average four per cent.

(C) Reuters Limited.