(1) EMEA Claims (2) US Restoration Plan termination

(1) Emea Claims

The Canadian monitor Ernst and Young have submitted their 58th report to the US court outlining a proposal to set a bar date for Feb 11, 2011 for all Nortel EMEA related claims. Most of those claims are inter company and will likely be contentious. They are also a sticking point in terms of settling the division of assets between geographic units of Nortel and it is E&Y's point that these claims need to be identified and resolved before the division of assets can be properly determined.

The report is listed on a docket for Dec 23rd on the Epiq web site.

The process in the report contains a paragraph referencing the claim by the UK Pension Trust, and the UK Pension Protection Fund. This is a little unsettling since that claims was ruled out of line by both the Canadian and US courts last year since it is a UK claim against other country assets. However the UK funds have not given up and are pressing for settlement and have been allowed to participate in the mediation talks on allocating the Nortel assets by geography. Since the claim is huge, ($3B), it could impact us tremendously if allowed to stand.

(2) US Restoration Plan Termination.

After almost 2 full years of not getting paid my non-qualified pension from Nortel US, I received a letter from them, sent through Epiq, basically telling me that the restoration plan has been terminated. The letter also states that any claims related to the restoration plan will be settled through the claim process that was established in 2009. Seems a little late for that information to be arriving. I presume this official termination is a required legal step to meet some ERISA or other employee protection requirement.