Robert, on corporate culture, Ebbers and Roberts responded to that question in a recent Washington Post interview, excerpt as follows (of course, we won't know how that's going to turn out until after the fact):
On Merging Corporate Cultures
How are you going to combine these two companies and their cultures?
What are the things that are going to be hard to do?
Roberts: Well, first of all you have to understand that the cultures of these
two companies are probably more identical than many of our competitors';
they're certainly more compatible. When MCI was doing the BT deal, we
were going to make that work. So the starting point is that these are two
companies that grew up having to compete with other customers, having to
hire and build employees. . . . And as a net situation I think you've got a
starting point that's pretty good.
Secondly, you don't want to throw away things that have value . . . [such
as] the value that is in the word MCI, which has been built through millions
and millions and millions of dollars of advertising. It's a household word.
And so to market domestically and continue to market under the MCI
product name, when you've put so much money into it, you don't want to
give that up. . . .
As you move into the world scene . . . MCI has got an excellent
relationship around the world with respect to dealing with the PTTs
[state-run phone companies abroad]. But we're certainly not a household
word out there in terms of competing in the marketplace. WorldCom
probably has more revenue from what I would call business customers in
Europe and so on than we do because we get ours from the PTTs.
Ebbers: You know, there are a lot of different cultures at WorldCom, 54
of them or so, and . . . only one of my direct reports [people who report
directly to Ebbers] comes from WorldCom. They've all come from, fit in,
as a result of mergers or acquisitions. And we're finding that exact same
thing with this transaction. We are further along in this transaction with
planning and organizing and getting ready to compete than in any merger
I've ever been involved in before. It's really, really exciting.
And when you think about what we will have as a combined company,
MCI has a much, much larger customer base than WorldCom does. And
when you think about WorldCom as out front building local facilities here
in the United States, we both have a domestic intercity network.
WorldCom is building facilities in Europe and Asia and so on, and we have
the opportunity to have that traffic.
For example, Citicorp, which is a big MCI customer, or Chrysler or
somebody like that, we will be able to offer them originating service on our
own network where it never touches a Bell operating company, never gets
off our network. Across the ocean, we also own our own undersea cable
terminating in Europe.
When you think that to send a call from Washington to New York is the
same cost as to send that call from Washington to Frankfurt, the marketing
opportunities of that, where no one else can do it, there is no one out there
that can offer end-to-end international service like that without it leaving
your network. Those opportunities are phenomenal for us. So people are
catching a vision of what we have the potential to do together.
As far as the culture is concerned, I think Bert's right, they are much more
similar than different.
Roberts: I think another thing, just to say it, because culture sometimes
starts at the top. I mean, this is very clearly true of Bernie. He's the CEO
of the company, he's really run that company. And what I am to him is
whatever he wants me to do to help out that process. . . . But it's not going
to be a power play or second-guessing. That's been made clear just from
the way the organization is structured. . . . There's not going to be a
question of who's directing the company, within the minds of the two
forces that have come together.
A few years back, MCI struck a deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
to get into the television business. You bought a satellite in a federal auction
and invested in News Corp. Now you're out of that business. It was the
hottest idea on the block for about a year. What was wrong with that idea?
Roberts: Nothing at the time. But I think what happened was you saw a
shift in a couple of things. First of all, there was an explosion in content
[sources of information] over the last three or four years. The Web means
you don't necessarily need to be aligned in a company that makes movies.
I think the second thing that happened, at least from our point of view, was
that the Telecommunications Act passed all of a sudden. . . . The
distribution of content at one time, I felt, was going to be important
because I assumed that the cable companies were going to be competitive
forces in telecommunications. Mistake. They're their own little monopolies.
So we no longer needed to have a content play to compete against the
cable companies because the cable companies never decided to compete.
. . . I mean we're in business because we're willing to take risks and, you
know, charge forward. And if that's not the right movement, well, we'll
move in another direction.
The U.S. economy has gone through this incredible period of growth, and
corporate profits have been soaring. But we do have a lot of concern
about Asia again. And I wonder, what does Asia mean to you? In the long
term and the short term?
Ebbers: Asia is a non-factor other than we're just starting now to build a
network in Tokyo. That's the only significant piece we have.
I do [see the prospects for the Asia crisis hurting industries]. But not in
telecommunications. I believe we will see some severe impacts of the
Asian marketplace on people who are affected by manufacturing, doing a
lot of selling, exporting and cheaper imports coming into the country and so
on. But people aren't importing [phone and data] calls into the United
States -- and we're continuing to export calls.
washingtonpost.com |
