Nortel Networks Inc., the defunct telecommunications company, has won final court approval of a $66.9 million settlement over retiree benefits.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross approved the accord at a hearing today in Wilmington, Delaware. The agreement, negotiated with a committee representing retirees, applies to Nortel’s U.S. employees.
Nortel once employed 8,000 people at a massive RTP campus.
Under the settlement, retirees agreed to accept the money in exchange for the ending of benefits, according to reports from Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review and Law360.
Nortel had sought to terminate the benefits last year.
“The proposed settlement would tie up one of the final loose ends in the company’s protracted bankruptcy, a four-year period during which Nortel sold off nearly all of its assets but had been unable to reach terms with its retirees to consensually terminate their benefit plans,” Law360 reported in January.
The company also recently won court approval for a $28 million settlement with disabled U.S. workers.
Nortel has settled as well with former executives who had put funds into a retirement savings account, Dow Jones reported.
That deal is worth almost $31 million and enables the former executives to gain 97 percent of the funds they had saved as of the day Nortel filed for bankruptcy, according to Dow Jones.
Nortel filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
Nortel is still in a dispute with U.K. administrators who are demanding $2.67 billion from Nortel’s main U.S. unit to pay retiree benefits.
Nortel’s U.K. retirees lost a bid last month to force the company into private arbitration over how to split $7 billion raised in liquidation sales of Nortel’s most valuable assets.
