A settlement could be reached within a month in one of the longest running and most expensive bankruptcies on record, a lawyer for Nortel Networks Corp.’s U.S. unit told an appeals court yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Nortel U.S. has been battling Canadian parent Nortel and British pensioners over how to divide $7.3 billion raised in the bankruptcy liquidation of the onetime telecommunications giant. A settlement would break an impasse that has lasted more than five years. Speaking at a hearing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, James Bromley, lawyer for Nortel U.S., said that the Nortel combatants will know by Oct. 7 whether the latest in a long series of mediation efforts will produce a deal. “We don’t have resolution yet,” Bromley said. If there is no settlement by Oct. 7, Nortel Canada, Nortel U.S. and European creditors will continue the court fights that have, over the years, pushed the professional fee totals to the $2 billion mark.
