Dunn undone

Add three to the vast sea of telecom industry workers who have lost their jobs in recent years: Nortel Networks' CEO, CFO and controller.

Departing CEO Frank Dunn came to Nortel out of college in 1976, holding various finance roles within the company including two years as CFO, making it somewhat unsurprising that accounting problems could have led the board to fire him this week (see story below). His promotion to CEO in 2001 (stepping into the big shoes of retired CEO John Roth, who is credited with transforming the company from a staid and subdued old workhorse to a global leader in techno innovation) surprised observers who expected Nortel to hire an external candidate rather than, in the word's of Dunn's critics, a "bean-counter," a "company man." And it was accompanied ominously by the simultaneous announcement of nearly 20,000 layoffs.

To the tens of thousands of workers Nortel has let go throughout the deflation of the telecom sector, Dunn's termination may provide Schadenfreude or at least reassurance that top executives are no more immune to accountability than rank-and-file clock-punchers. But to those employees still on Nortel's payroll, Dunn's departure provides an almost anachronistic instability, a late hit taken a year after Nortel announced its return to profitability and nearly a year after rival Lucent Technologies did the same. The damage done by those three lean years continues to defy overstatement; even after they passed, they brought an undignified end to a career that spanned a quarter century.

E-mail me at egubbins@primediabusiness.com.