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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chaz who wrote (3214)	6/27/1999 3:48:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Hi Chaz, MSFT is more of a one man company, in relative terms, whereas T had a string of elected and appointed successors at the helm, none of whom held a majority share. A primary difference being the identification factor at the personal level with the core-and-fiber well being of a sustained entity. You shoot the company in the head, you shoot the man in the head, is how I think Gates regards this matter. Just a thought. And yes, fact is often (and sometimes much) stranger than fiction. GBLX and QWST in a heated duel, each being still wet behind the ears, making pitches to acquire an RBOC, being a primary example. --- The chaos that you imply would ensue from a MSFT breakup is no different in many ways than what many thought of a Bell breakup fifteen or sixteen years ago. Some will even argue to this day that chaos did occur, and still persists to this day due to the whims of the regs. Most, however, will agree to the eventual benefits that came about due to the breakup, despite some early growing pains and the need to make adjustments. --- Of course, there was no major, sustained rallying around any social- or investor-led causes to prevent such a breakup at the time, which could actually be viewed as being supportive of the novel you referenced. Quite the opposite occurred. Bell didn't fight it, and their investors all benefited from it in the end, and everyone (well, most everyone) was happy. Then, as if to make their point even more pronounced (a sequel?), just in case anyone forgot, T then returns a dozen years later and repeats their breakup act with WECO and Bell Labs (LU) and NCR, along with some other smaller droppings. And now they are poised to build again, maybe to do the same thing one more time with their newly federated RBOC-like framework that they are currently assembling with regards to the delivery of broadband Internet access and voice over cable. ----- The novel, Tarzan, started out to be a one book event. E.R. Burroughs then went on to write three more sequels, which placed Tarzan at a very old age by the time the last was finished. The readership, by the time the fourth book was history, wouldn't hear of anything else when it appeared that no more sequels were forthcoming. Therefore, Burroughs had to re-invent the main character dozens more times, each time coming up with a different reason for starting each of the next several dozen releases at the earlier age. --- And yes, for those of you who also saw it, I was reminded of the foregoing ERB/Tarzan sequels by a Discovery Channel (I think it was) piece that I caught on the boob tube, last night. -g- And so it goes... Regards, Frank Coluccio