Boos and catcalls rain down on Alcatel-Lucent CEO

An article in BusinessWeek is asking whether Alcatel-Lucent CEO Patricia Russo can hold on at the company. During the company's annual shareholders' meeting in Paris at the end of May, boos and catcalls surrounded her as she addressed investors. Since Lucent's merger with Alcatel in 2006,  the vendor has posted six straight quarterly losses and has taken more than $4.5 billion in writedowns, while its stock has plummeted 50 percent.

The report notes that while Alcatel-Lucent is struggling with economic turmoil in the market, tight credit and stiff competition from vendors such as China's Huawei, it has fared worse than its competitors. One other interesting bit of information: Outside of the U.S., Huawei is just about even with Alcatel-Lucent as the third largest supplier of GSM networks.

For more:
- read BusinessWeek [1]

Related stories:
Could Alcatel-Lucent rule change doom Russo? Russo article [2]
Alcatel-Lucent shareholders ease rules for CEO removal. Alcatel-Lucent story [3]