Ali,
I really don't want to belabor this, but the "short sighted/simplistic" comment I made was in reference to Ruilin's comment about Lee needing to be fired. He himself said we should have (his words) "strong attitude towards Lee". I do. I think (not feel) that the acquisitions of BBN, the expansion into the long distance arena, the puchase of a portion of the QWEST dark fiber network, and the expansion into Latin America are all things that will benefit GTE in the long run. Did they impede the progress of the stock price in the meantime? Probably. But that's called building value, and it takes time.
Ruilin is more than entitled to his opinion, as I am to mine. It's just that I felt the following comment (by him) was not descriptive of GTE's situation...
>>I hope Lee can predict all of these consequences. Again, I think he should be fired by the shareholders, in such a bull market, the share price has not been changing for two years, everybody should have strong attitude towards Lee.<<
With regard to the merger, I'm taking a wait and see attitude. If BT and MCI feel the bids are of sufficient interest to warrant talking to WCOM and GTE, then I'll wait and see what happens. Remember... MCI's board has a duty to due what's best for their shareholders... If a merger with GTE will be doomed to debt laden failure, then we should assume they'll go in another direction. However, if there is more to GTE's offer than what is being fed to the press, I'll evaluate the details when they come to light. This wouldn't be the first acquisition deal where the final details might be far removed from the initial press releases...
Trust me, I'm not in love with this stock, it's just one of many that I think has a good chance for appreciation... but I do think GTE management should be given a bit more credit than I've seen in some of the recent posts. They've built up a company with a great deal of value built into it, and I'm trusting them to not throw it away just to make a "deal"...
DWB |
