Word: belle
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Most of the credit for AT&T's resurgence goes to the company's risk-taking CEO, Bob Allen. Lanky and quietly determined, Allen has spent his entire 36- year career within the Bell System and AT&T. He learned to take chances from his father Walter, who quit his job of 21 years with the J.J. Newberry chain of five-and-dimes to purchase a bankrupt children's clothing store in New Castle, Indiana. "Talk about courage," recalls Allen, still in admiration...
Allen took charge of AT&T after the sudden death of CEO James Olson in 1988. Olson had guided the company through the painful period following the breakup of Ma Bell, when it chopped its labor force 19%, or 70,000 workers. It was Allen, though, who changed the company's lockstep culture. Going against tradition, he recruited top executives from outside, including Alex Mandl, former president of the Sea-Land ocean-shipping concern, as chief financial officer; Jerre Stead, former chief executive of electrical-equipment maker Square D, as head of the computer division; and Richard Bodman...
...units, focusing on such crucial areas as messaging, network computing, wireless communications and desktop video. The merged companies, for instance, are developing a cash machine that identifies customers by voice rather than by a numerical code punched on a keypad. NCR has been given the key to the famed Bell Laboratories research center. Says Stead: "It's like a kid being let loose in a candy store...
Second, its forced divestiture of the local Bell companies means that AT&T no longer has a direct conduit into individual homes and businesses -- and the 1984 federal-court consent decree makes it difficult to get back into that business. Like other long-distance carriers, AT&T must go through the local telephone system and pay access fees for the connection. The telecommunications titan paid $14 billion in such charges last year...
Another way AT&T can directly connect to consumers is through the cellular market, which was one reason for its $3.8 billion purchase of 33% of McCaw Cellular Communications, the largest cellular company. This, however, could present regulatory problems. The seven regional Baby Bells accuse AT&T of trying to subvert the 1984 divestiture order by using the McCaw link to surreptitiously re-enter the local phone business. They want the Federal Communications Commission either to force AT&T to dissolve its McCaw alliance, or to lift the ban prohibiting local phone companies from offering long- distance service. Says Richard...