Canadian telecommunications equipment maker Nortel on Wednesday said it will seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in both the United States and Canada.

The Toronto-based company will also seek creditor protection for its European subsidiaries.

It has been a long, hard fall for the one-time high-flier.

Once Canada’s largest publicly traded company, Nortel lost more than 90 percent of its market capitalization in 2001-2002 in the wake of the dark days of the telecom downturn. The company was also laid low by a subsequent financial scandal.

The company has spent the past eight years attempting to rebuild its business and its reputation. It has succeeded in slowing its slide under CEO Mike Zafirovski, but even that respite was not enough to halt Nortel’s financial implosion. (Nortel Braces for Breakup)

In November the company posted a $3.14 billion loss, its largest since the dot-com bust, and shed another 1,300 jobs. After a number of rounds of layoffs, the company has slashed its workforce from 95,000 in 2000 to 26,000 currently.

There was some talk of a potential bailout of Nortel by the Canadian government since the company attracted immense amounts of investment dollars from Canadian money managers. (Will Canada Offer Nortel a Bailout?)

But after eight years of failed efforts to regain its footing without outside help, and with $2.4 billion in cash, the company finally chose bankruptcy.