Lucent sell off falls far short of its debt

NEWS Early this year, the sale by IPO was expected to raise $6.5bn for Lucent. But that figure has been dropping and Agere notified the New York Stock Exchange that it will postpone the launch until next week. Yesterday it filed with the US regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, that its shares would be priced at $6 to $7 each - a far cry from the $16 to $19 hoped for in January. At this price the IPO will give Lucent about $3.9bn to apply against its roughly $8bn of debt.