Ericsson is clearly weighing its response to the proposed merger of its two major European rivals, Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent. After it emerged that CEO Hans Vestberg is to hold a senior management meeting to discuss Ericsson’s own potential M&A options, speculation went into overdrive, with Juniper Networks appearing to be the pundits’ favorite choice. According to Ericsson sources who spoke to Bloomberg, a large acquisition may be considered as one solution to maintaining market leadership in network infrastructure despite the Nokia/ALU combination. However, the Swedish firm has limited choices at this scale, having passed on its own possible bid for ALU last year. Apparently, it was concerned that the disruption of the merger would not be justified by sufficient scale…