Telco equipment company Nortel Networks has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in its native Canada and in the U.S. The Toronto company’s affiliates in Asia, including LG (SEO: 066570) Nortel and in the Caribbean and Latin America, are not involved in the bankruptcy filings and will continue to operate normally. Nortel says that it has been trying to turn its financial situation around since 2005. Although it claims to have made some progress, the credit crunch and wider economic meltdown have certainly erased any progress. Release

—Bloomberg: In fact, Nortel lost almost $7 billion since Mike Zafirovski took the reigns nearly four years ago.
Revenues have fallen since Nortel sold its high-speed mobile-phone unit to Alcatel for $320 million in 2006, as it sought to shift its concentration to WiMax. At the end of Q3, Nortel’s debt stood at $6.3 billion and it has $1 billion in bonds that come due in 2011. Total liabilities amounted to almost $12 billion.