China's Huawei, one of the world's top makers of networking equipment, on Thursday denied a report it was in talks to form an alliance with Franco-American rival Alcatel-Lucent.

French magazine Challenges said the two companies had begun preliminary tie-up talks, envisioning making a certain number of products together, but had ruled out a merger.

Alcatel-Lucent shares rose slightly in Paris on Wednesday.

The reports are inaccurate. Huawei is not in discussions with Alcatel-Lucent, said Huawei spokesman Ross Gan. A spokeswoman for Alcatel-Lucent declined to comment to Reuters on Wednesday.

This is not the first time Huawei has scotched speculation of a linkup with Alcatel-Lucent.

Late last month, the Chinese company declared it had no plans to buy a stake in Alcatel-Lucent, two days after the latter's stock surged 16 percent in a single session partly on market talk it could be bought by a Chinese rival.

There have been instances though where a Chinese company has said something and later done quite the opposite.

Geely Automotive said on Wednesday its parent company plans to bid for all of Ford Motor Co's Volvo Car Corp.

In May, Geely made a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange saying it had no plans to submit a bid for Volvo.

Huawei has formed alliances with other foreign competitors in the past, including Germany's Siemens and U.S. firm 3COM.

(Reporting by Kirby Chien and Marie Mawad; writing by Doug Young and Muralikumar Anantharaman, Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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