Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, honourable members. I do appreciate the importance of the request to be here with you today. I do take your own inquiry very seriously, and I look forward to a very transparent and open discussion. I believe I have ten minutes of openin

Finance committee  First of all, I thank you for the question. I do think it's important to understand where the company was back in 2005 and 2006. I can assure you, there's been a level of a commitment and passion from the employees, customers, and suppliers to try to rectify lots of issues that

Finance committee  That's an excellent point. We've tried to be very transparent from day one.

Finance committee  We've tried from day one to articulate the challenges for the company, which were rather significant. We also had very significant assets and tried to articulate what we were trying to do to restore a formerly great company. We really thought we were there in the middle of last y

Finance committee  I fully agree with that statement. Mr. Tay can confirm the very heated discussions we had on what's possible. At times you want to do something that simply the circumstances do not allow. That fact of life is painful for me to understand and finally accept.

Finance committee  The annual incentive plan is a part of wages. We continue to make the payment. We do have a retention plan in place for 980 employees. It's a significant number, which we thought was absolutely imperative to stabilize the company and to actually give us the best chance to increas

Finance committee  Thank you for that question. The decision on January 14 was the most painful and agonizing of my 34 years in business. It was very hard to come to the realization that to continue with the company as is would provide an even greater risk and potential for liquidation, which we c

Finance committee  I have a couple of comments on the pension plan. For a large corporation, our pension assets have been managed rather conservatively. You can have a different view with 20-20 hindsight, but 50% of our pension assets were in equities, the stock market, and 50% in fixed income. M

Finance committee  A very quick comment. We have 50% of our pension plan in equities and 50% in fixed income. For the last three years on balance we've performed pretty well compared to benchmarks. I'll be happy to follow up with more specifics on that.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I actually want to make sure that when we discuss the bonuses, sir, we understand that this is part of a compensation program that is very typical in the high-tech industry. A secretary, for example, used to make $40,000. Typically, if you are an industrial company, you pay the f

Finance committee  Sir, the discussions have been what can we do to pay severance. We're absolutely convinced that paying the annual incentive plan and the retention is critical to preserve value within Nortel. That's based on any good practice that has happened in this country and many countries a

Finance committee  For the retention plans in specific, for all 980 employees, including the eight executives you mentioned, it's a very specific retention plan. This is new. That's for this year. It's a very volatile situation to be able to retain and motivate employees, to be able to stabilize th

Finance committee  The short answer is yes. When you file for credit protection, that means you have many real liabilities, whether it is to a supplier, to an employee, to a bond holder. The unfortunate realization at that point in time is that you cannot fulfill all your obligations. That's why yo

Finance committee  The approach internally on continuing to fulfill obligations to existing employees in the retention plan, based on studies of companies all over the world, we thought was the absolute minimum requirement. Creditors, who have the same expectations as employees, and would like to o