Word: worldcom
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...back in 1998 when the economy still was new, WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers was clinching his acquisition of long-distance giant MCI, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson had a bone to pick with him. Speaking at Tougaloo College--a cradle of the civil rights movement located near Clinton, Miss., where WorldCom is headquartered--Jackson rhetorically asked his audience why Ebbers could afford $37 billion for MCI but hadn't donated funds to local black students. Ebbers wasn't present, but LeRoy Walker Jr., a leading black businessman and Tougaloo board member, pulled Jackson aside to set him straight: Ebbers...
Right now, though, it's hard to find a Friend of Bernie outside Mississippi. When Ebbers, under pressure from WorldCom's board, announced his resignation last week, the company was sinking under $28 billion in debt, a shriveling stock (which closed at $1.79 last week after peaking at $64.50 in mid-1999) and a Securities and Exchange Commission probe into the more than $400 million that WorldCom recently loaned or guaranteed to loan to Ebbers at a charitable 2.15% interest rate. Many disgruntled WorldCom execs were hoping that the new CEO, John Sidgmore, would run the company not from Clinton...
...WorldCom, like much of the U.S. telecom industry, looks as broken as a coin phone in a bus station. And so, sadly, does the executive image of Ebbers, who was once the refreshing antithesis of New Economy slick. "I am not a technology dude," he has boasted. But he has slipped nonetheless onto the crowded pyre of '90s corporate excess. "I feel like crying," Ebbers told a Jackson TV station after his resignation last week. "But I am 1,000% convinced in my heart that this is a temporary thing...
...rated by Forbes in 1999 as one of the 200 richest Americans, with a $1.4 billion net worth, his fortune is in peril. At a time when other infamous chief executives have covertly jettisoned their company stock, he has stubbornly held on to his 27 million shares of WorldCom, many of them bought with margin loans. WorldCom executives say privately that Ebbers agreed to resign largely so he could focus on selling off real estate assets, perhaps even his beloved $60 million ranch in British Columbia...
...goes on in this industry." What he did perceive was that his networks had to keep getting bigger to achieve economies of scale. By 1995, LDDS counted many of America's largest corporations as customers for its vast voice and data network and, after buying IDB, grandly renamed itself WorldCom. It then acquired UUNET, one of the world's largest Internet hookup firms, along with AOL's Internet networking division. Ebbers then brashly outbid British Telecom to grab MCI, using as currency his WorldCom stock, whose value skyrocketed 7,000% during the 1990s...