A milkman becomes king of the megadeal. It's rare enough that an entrepreneur pulls off the largest takeover in corporate history. Edmonton -born Bernard Ebbers - former milkman, former bar bouncer, two time college failure - is poised to do it twice in less than two years - source Globe and Mail - Oct. 6
Head of MCI WorldCom has come a long way from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
MATT MOORE
CLINTON, Miss. (AP) - In this town where roads are made of brick, cars are left unlocked and college kids dart in and out of coffee shops, Bernard Ebbers is everywhere.
The 6-foot-4 native of Edmonton came here in the late 1960s to play basketball for Mississippi College, a private school with more than 3,600 students. Wednesday, Clinton is the 58-year-old billionaire's home and the centre of his life's work - MCI WorldCom Inc.
To townspeople, he is Bernie Ebbers, not only the boss to 900 MCI WorldCom employees, but also the vice-chairman of the Mississippi College board of trustees.
"He comes to ball games," said Howell Todd, Mississippi College president. "He's very loyal to this institution. He's very keen on our philosophy and mission, and in ensuring that we carry out that mission."
He is also quiet and faithful and once cancelled a Saturday night business function with the Metro Jackson Chamber of Commerce so he could finish preparing the lesson for Sunday school the next morning.
"I know he is a deeply spiritual man; his faith is extremely important to him, and his values," said Todd.
It might be faith that helped prompt Ebbers, whose early jobs included that of basketball coach and small-chain motel owner, to invest in a tiny long-distance company called Long Distance Discount Services, even though he knew little about the phone business.
That was in 1983, just before AT&T was dismembered.
He turned that company, an idea drawn up in a Hattiesburg coffee shop, into the second-largest telecommunications company with net income last year of $2.6 billion and an overall value around $117.8 billion.
LDDS has been involved in 60 mergers since it was born. Before Tuesday, Ebbers' biggest deal was when his company, renamed WorldCom, bought MCI Communications. Now, he's manoeuvred MCI Worldcom to take over Sprint Corp., in a $115 billion US deal that is the largest corporate acquisition in history.
No one was surprised about the latest announcement; analysts had been saying MCI WorldCom needed Sprint for its wireless segment.
And Ebbers realized that, too, his friends say.
"I think it's safe to say that Bernie is always a step or two ahead of the rest of us," said Duane O'Neill, president of the Metro Jackson Chamber of Commerce. "He's a true visionary in that he makes it happen."
Ebbers, a former cowboy and soybean rancher, is credited with methodically making his company grow and remain profitable and competitive in an era of corporate mergers that has set the entire industry on its ear.
None of which surprises Todd, who has known Ebbers for five years.
"He is very unassuming; doesn't want to draw a lot of attention to himself," says Todd. "But beware because underneath all that laid-back attitude is a steel-trap mind and one of the sharpest, shrewdest individuals I've ever known.
"You can look at the company and see that." |
