Nortel Networks’ plans to sell-off major parts of its businesses appear to be on the home straight. The Canadian vendor announced yesterday that US and Canadian courts have approved its US$915 million deal to sell its enterprise business to Avaya.Earlier Wednesday, a US judge had overruled objections by Verizon Communications, which claimed the sale would threaten to disrupt anti-terrorism and law-enforcement networks that run on Nortel equipment. Meanwhile, Canadian industry minister Tony Clement has stated that Ericsson’s proposed US$1.13 billion acquisition of Nortel’s CDMA and LTE access assets – announced in July – will not be subject to review under the Investment Canada Act. According to Dow Jones Newswires, Clement said the book value of the assets being sold fall “far below” the current threshold for review of CAD312 million (US$292 million). He added that based on all the information presented to him, “there are no grounds to believe that this transaction could be injurious to Canada’s national security.” Canadian vendor RIM had urged the government to prevent the sale so it could buy the asset.

Nortel – once Canada’s largest and best-known technology company – filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January this year. It announced in May that it was looking to sell-off its majority stake (50 percent + 1 share) in LG-Nortel, its South Korean joint venture with LG Electronics. To date, Sony Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and two private equity firms have been linked to acquiring the stake.