Re: I guess what goes around comes around...aka Karma
Sorry - I was trying to expand on the post but it timed out...
Hi. Yes, I think I'm pretty much correct on the dates.
As you say Marconi "blew up" in 2001. But all that happened then was that everyone realised that Marconi's debts far outweighed the value of the company. The terms of those debts meant that, as long as the company could make the payments the creditors could not ask for their money back.
So Marconi staggered on, rapidly down-sizing as it went along, and desperately hoping for 21CN business as the last hope.
In 2005 BT announced the 21CN suppliers and Marconi was not on the list. Soon after the shock announcement Ericsson acquired Marconi's Networks division (which they never really did anything with), and Telent (not Telus...my error) kept the rest - which included the incredibly lucrative System X rights.
Interestingly the day Marconi was formed in 1999 (from GEC and other bits and pieces) there were 55,000 employees worldwide.
The scale of business failure and financial mismanagement are quite staggering.