Word: bt
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...careful to keep a line open to BT, which Ebbers had derided as a vanquished foe three weeks ago. Lee has talked over the years with BT chairman Sir Iain Vallance and MCI's Roberts about a possible combination of the three telecom giants. Lee stressed last week that he would welcome BT, which has held a 20% stake in MCI since 1993, in a combined GTE and MCI. "We share the global vision of our industry that brought MCI and British Telecom together," Lee noted in a "Dear Bert" letter to Roberts...
...personal styles of the ceos as by the strength of their bids. Vallance, although he flat-out bungled his MCI bid, could use his 20% stake to provide the swing vote in a showdown. He seems more disposed to side with Lee than with Ebbers, who shattered BT's dream of acquiring all of MCI. Lee and Roberts, both engineers, have a common bond, while the defiantly nontechnical Ebbers is a wildcatter who built WorldCom into the fourth largest U.S. long-distance company through a relentless series of deals. "Bernie Ebbers wasn't our type," sniffs an MCI insider...
...BT, which made its own cash and stock offer for the American long-distance firm in November 1996 (and cut the offered price to $21 billion in August), owns a 20 percent stake in MCI. Indeed, BT may now be thinking like a stakeholder...
...Internet, ensuring that it would have the capacity to carry the volume of data--from E-mail to video clips--that Sidgmore sees as the key to growth in the telecommunications industry. Sidgmore and Ebbers spotted their chance last summer when a rift developed between MCI and BT over the price of their carefully negotiated merger because MCI's share price kept falling. Opportunity knocked the moment BT demanded a $5 billion discount off the price it had agreed to pay for MCI, which said in July that it would lose $800 million trying to break into the local-phone...
...that the MCI acquisition is by any means a done deal. MCI management, led by chairman Bert Roberts, had not been heard from as of the end of last week. MCI shareholders will get a chance to vote on the rival offers, and BT could choose to raise its bid, although it can ill afford a bidding war. BT, whose shareholders were unhappy with the MCI deal, may simply decide to walk away. That would leave the company's global strategy adrift but provide a nice $1.3 billion profit on its MCI investment. "The player who benefits most from WorldCom...