Alcatel is to sell about 100 factories in the next 18 months to focus on telecommunications networks and services, chairman Mr Serge Tchuruk said today.
He was announcing a change in strategy and forecasting strong growth in Asia this year.
The French group also expected to make at least euro 2 billion euros in capital gain from the sale of most of its non-core financial holdings this year.
Alcatel intended in particular to win approval from the French state to exercise an option to sell its holding of 8.6 per cent in Framatome, which makes boilers for nuclear power stations.
Alcatel failed last monthto merge with the troubled Canadian telecommunications industrial giant Lucent Technologies and also announced a quarterly loss of euro 3 billion owing to restructuring.
Mr Tchuruk did not say how much Alcatel expected to gain from the switch of strategy but said the growing broadband access equipment business and services would eventually account for two thirds of sales.
The group has seen its share price fluctuate strongly in the past two years, and Mr Tchuruk saidby the end of next year it would have sold all but a dozen of the 120 factories it owned around the world at the end of last year.
AFP