MCI is hungry... for wireless
Merger wave to keep rolling: Either 'acquire, be acquired or perish,' MCI executive says
Source: The Detroit News
Tim Price, president of MCIWorldCom's Communications Division, called the 1990s the "era of the permanent merger" in a speech Tuesday to the Economic Club of Detroit.
"These are exciting, dynamic, turbulent times filled with opportunity," he said.
They're also filled with mergers, lots of them, Price said, as companies struggle to reinvent themselves to keep pace with ever- changing markets, technologies and threats.
The dynamic of "acquire, be acquired or perish...shows no signs of abating," he said, at a time when "today's competitor is often tomorrow's colleague."
Price noted the total value of all mergers and acquisitions hit $1.6 trillion last year.
He said the merger wave is being powered by high-flying stock prices, rapid and unpredictable technological change, intensifying competition and a more receptive political and legal climate.
Price said he sees two types of competitors: "The quick and the dead."
"The surest route to failure is to place blind faith in the strategies of the past," he said.
Price said MCIWorldCom, which has made 70 acquisitions in the past 20 years, is thinking about buying a wireless phone company.
He expects price tags to shrink as the industry sorts out what he sees as an emerging glut of wireless providers, but he wouldn't elaborate on who MCI might acquire or when. MCI now resells service from other providers.
Price said the merger boom could last another 10 years and noted that 80 percent of corporate mergers don't pay off within seven years.
(Copyright 1999)
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Publication date: Sep 15, 1999
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