Word: worldcom
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When asked by TIME last month whether he had any new deals up his sleeve, the voraciously acquisitive Bernard Ebbers, CEO of WorldCom, shot back, "Are we alive...
Just when the British Telecom merger with MCI seemed like a done deal, up steps an American firm to throw a spanner in the works. WorldCom, the U.S. telecommunications upstart that bought CompuServe a couple of weeks ago and snapped up Brooks Fiber, a local telephone company Tuesday, decided Wednesday to have MCI for dessert. Money Daily reports that WorldCom will offer $30 billion in stock for the long-distance carrier, trumping BT's offer by about $12 billion. But it seems everyone was a winner as BT, MCI and WorldCom stock all soared on the London markets...
Ebbers, 56, will take Sidgmore's word on that. Ebbers is as low frequency as any telecom executive can be. He favors faded blue jeans and golf shirts and on-the-road Willie Nelson tunes. While his 1.8% stake in WorldCom is worth more than $560 million, he likes to aw-shucks his own role in his company. "The thing that has helped me personally," he says, "is that I don't understand a lot of what goes on in this industry." So he relies on executives who come along with acquired companies...
...most notable has been Sidgmore, 46, a weekend rock guitarist who masterminded last week's AOL deal. Sidgmore worked out the three-way swap with AOL chairman Steve Case at a breakfast meeting in July. Voila! WorldCom now controls the networking divisions of CompuServe, AOL and the Microsoft Network, which was already in the fold. Yet neither Sidgmore nor Ebbers plans to stop adding to their empire anytime soon. Asked whether WorldCom will continue its voraciously acquisitive ways, Ebbers responds with typical bluntness, "Are we alive...
...WorldCom CBS SportsLine...