Alcatel-Lucent Chief Resigns as Company Posts Loss

BERLIN — Alcatel-Lucent said Thursday that its chief executive, Ben Verwaayen, would step down as the company, a maker of telecommunications equipment, posted a big loss for the fourth quarter.

Mr. Verwaayen, 60, was hired in September 2008 and promised to transform Alcatel-Lucent into a “normal” company that would pay a dividend by 2012. But he never managed to restore reliable profitability. The company has not paid a dividend since 2007.

Éric Beaudet, an analyst at Natixis, a bank in Paris, said that Mr. Verwaayen had lost credibility among investors after promising a succession of restructuring plans that had failed to turn the company around.

“With the C.E.O. having lost credibility, we believe that this move will be appreciated, even though a replacement has not yet been named,” Mr. Beaudet wrote in a note to investors.

On Thursday, Alcatel-Lucent — created by the 2006 merger of Alcatel of France and Lucent Technologies of New Jersey — reported a loss of €1.37 billion, or $1.8 billion, for the last three months of 2012, compared with a profit of €868 million a year earlier. Sales fell 1.3 percent in the period, to €4.1 billion.

In 2010, Alcatel-Lucent posted a net loss of €292 million. The next year, the company had a €1.1 billion net profit. For 2012, the company reported a loss of €1.1 billion.