Nortel Networks Corp., the defunct telecommunications company, opened a court fight with its U.S. unit over as much as $1 billion that bondholders claim as interest and Canadian retirees say may belong to them, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Nortel contends that the unit, which has operated independently of the Mississauga, Ontario-based parent since filing for bankruptcy in 2009, is overpaying bondholders by about $900 million. The unit has asked a federal judge to approve a deal to pay $1 billion in interest to bondholders including U.S. hedge funds, on top of about $4 billion they are set to collect. The dispute is part of a larger battle over how to divide about $7 billion the unit raised in a court-supervised sale of assets including a trove of patents auctioned in 2011 to a group that included Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Sony Corp.
