Bell Canada sale dies slow, painful death

A deal that seemed to have nine lives - the $51 billion sale of Canada's largest telephone company, the largest leveraged buyout ever proposed - finally died early Thursday. The cause of death: solvency issues. While BCE and its would-be buyers have agreed to part ways, they are squabbling over whether BCE is owed $1.2 billion in termination fees. The buyers - a consortium led by private equity powerhouse Providence Equity Partners and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, a major shareholder of BCE - argue that they don't have to pay because terms of the deal were not met. The end of the BCE buyout marks the latest contentious turn in a deal fraught with drama, dating back to the initial bidding war for the Canadian telecom in early 2007.