They thought they were going to be able to do the quick cost cut and then buy another company, in this case Nortel, and then flip it is an IPO. They actually m

They thought they were going to be able to do the quick cost cut and then buy another company, in this case Nortel, and then flip it is an IPO. They actually made a mess of the company, then 2008 happened and then made a bigger mess with the Nortel acquisition (strategically made no sense, paid way too much and then botched the integration). The part of the Nortel business that Avaya bought was actually profitable at the time. Epic cluster.