Word: worldcom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Cooper still looks distantly like the Clinton High prom princess she once was, and the past nine months have not left her jaded. "We have 62,000 employees working very hard. These employees did not do this. The vast majority of WorldCom is made up of capable, honest employees trying to do the right thing. Only a handful of people were involved in any wrongdoing," she says. "I feel a personal obligation to see this thing to some kind of conclusion." When asked what that might be, she answers, "I don't know...
Whenever Cooper admits to having had painful moments at WorldCom, she follows the acknowledgment with a big, beaming smile. But when I hand her a picture of Ebbers and Sullivan--her former mentors--holding up their hands to be sworn in before Congress, Cooper's eyes well up with tears. She turns the picture over and says, "I don't ever want to see that again." Friends estimate that Cooper has lost close to 30 lbs. The other day she had to laugh when her skirt nearly fell off while she was talking to a colleague at the office...
...been personally thanked by a single senior executive at WorldCom, her colleagues say. And there is grumbling that some employees think the company could have borrowed its way out of its problems and avoided bankruptcy if she had stayed quiet. Some people who used to smile and chat with Cooper and her team by the coffee maker don't do that anymore. "What gets me angry is that after all she has done, you would think she would be rewarded," says a friend and colleague at WorldCom. "She went through a battle, one of the biggest battles in corporate America...
...November, WorldCom's new CEO, Michael Capellas, held a rally to try to light a spark in the demoralized WorldCom work force. He called members of his management team onto the stage, and the all-male ensemble sang, "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!" Cooper was not there; the rally was in Virginia, and she was back in Mississippi, with her team, watching via webcast...
...When WorldCom first owned up to its massive accounting fraud last summer, most observers of the once soaring telecom upstart figured its calls were numbered. Rivals like AT&T and Sprint were happy to close the book on a company they blame as the principal culprit in the telecom bubble--one that had posted curiously high profits that they could never quite seem to match. But six months after its dirty little secret of success was exposed and the company was left for dead, WorldCom is confounding both its critics and its competition--not only refusing to die but showing...