posted 05-31-2000 12:23 PM         

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The EU Commission begins the open-season scrutity on the deal today. Is it really anti-competitive?
* AT&T has more than twice the market share of consumer long-distance business that a combined WorldCom and Sprint would hold -- about 60% vs. 23%. Maybe a strong #2 would promote better competition.
* In total business long-distance market share, the two are close.
* WorldCom still has no wireless, so there is no merging of two wireless behemoths here.
* In Europe, the big telcos aren't lining up before the EC to protest, a good measure of the deal's benign anticompetitive thrust.
* Regional Bell companies think if they make enough noise, Justice and the FCC will throw them a bone in the form of allowing them to sell long distance. That's clearly their goal, hidden behind anti-competitive rhetoric.

And it makes sense. The only similar business between the two companies are the long distance ones. Sprint brings wireless, Worldcom brings Internet. And together, they provide better and more-forward looking competition to AT&T and the other up and comers like Qwest.

posted 05-24-2000 07:14 PM         

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In brief:

- WorldCom (WCOM) will market America Online to its millions of phone customers under a new alliance, the companies said.

posted 04-25-2000 10:54 AM         

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Worth magazine ranked Bernie Ebbers #16 on its top CEOs list. Here's what they said:

"In 1999, Bernie Ebbers announced MCI WorldCom's largest acquisition to date: a $129 billion deal for Sprint. For his next trick, Ebbers, No. 19 on last year's list, is barreling straight into Europe's wireless market. "We intend to pursue whatever opportunities make sense for the company to fill out our portfolio in that area," he says. OUTLOOK: "MCI WorldCom has one of the best sets of communications assets in the world," says telecom analyst Drake Johnstone of Davenport & Co. "European carriers and others are sort of tripping over themselves to match it." MCI WorldCom is still adding to its global fiber-optic infrastructure at a furious rate. Look for the company to build out its broadband high- speed wireless network to residential households and small businesses. AT&T and AOL Time Warner had better watch out. INTERNET STRATEGY: Ebbers is positioning his company to be the preferred pathway to the Internet, via both dial-up and wireless connections. MCI WorldCom's Internet service unit, UUNET, handles more than 50 percent of all Internet traffic in the world. Sprint PCS currently provides wireless Internet access for America Online subscribers, and AOL is MCI WorldCom's largest customer. No wonder antitrust cops in the U.S. and Europe have their doubts about the Sprint deal. (Most analysts expect that to complete the merger, MCI WorldCom will have to shed some of Sprint's "backbone" Internet assets.). Last year, MCI WorldCom's Internet revenue grew 57 percent, to $3.5 billion, accounting for almost 12 percent of its total communications revenue. ON TRACK? Ebbers expects revenue growth in the coming year to fall between 13.5 and 15.5 percent. Earnings, says the analysts' consensus, should grow at a breakneck 43.7 percent clip. HEADACHE: Ebbers still has a long way to go before clearing the regulatory requirements for the Sprint merger, and he can't predict when the company will start generating revenue from the deal. THREE WORDS: Devout, blunt, earthy. He recently told members of the National Press Club about how strange he felt in a business suit. "You don't know what it's like to leave the farm with cow manure on your boots," he said, "but my mama says I've arrived." PASSION: Ebbers is a member of Promise Keepers, the Christian brotherhood that encourages men to embrace God and "their identities as His sons" in a world of "negotiable values, confused identities, and distorted priorities." Ebbers began the first annual meeting of the merged MCI WorldCom last summer with a prayer: "Our father, we come to you today to thank you for these people who have supported us and been so faithful in serving this company." TRUE STORY: Ebbers began his working life in his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta, as a milk-delivery man by day, bar bouncer by night. Left Canada because "frozen toes are not a fun thing." FINANCIAL REWARD: In 1998, Ebbers's earned a base salary of $935,000, and he collected a bonus of $7 million, down from $17 million the year before. His 13 million MCI WorldCom shares are worth about $569 million."

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