Following the court-approved sale of Nortel assets to Swedish giant Ericsson, CEOs and business leaders on the COMPAS business panel were asked for their views on the resulting controversies.

By a wide margin, panelists believe that

• The Government of Canada should review the sale, partly because of the vast amount of tax support that had contributed to the development of Nortel intellectual property;
  
• The Harper Government should also review the sale because (a) of the national security implications of licensing next generation technology to a foreign company and (b) Nortel acted improperly in requiring bidders to agree not to bid on any other property for at least a year with the result that RIM did not make a bid; and, on a separate matter,
  
• Canada’s Export Development Corporation (EDC) was wrong to offer foreign-owned Nokia substantial financing for its ultimately unsuccessful bid.

These are the key findings from this past week’s Internet survey of CEOs and business leaders on the COMPAS panel. The weekly business survey is undertaken for Canadian Business magazine under sponsorship of BDO Dunwoody LLP.

View / Download complete poll in PDF