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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (2579)	6/12/1998 4:46:00 AM
From: ANANT	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11568

AW and all : MCI Offers to Sell More Assets To Speed WorldCom Acquisition By JARED SANDBERG and JOHN R. WILKE Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Here is the link to the article.June 12,98 interactive.wsj.com Excerpts from the above article: Justice Department officials indicated that MCI would likely need a firm agreement to sell all the assets before the merger would be cleared, the lawyers added. -------------------------------------------- Questions on the sale of additional assets: Who would get the assets? Would a sale change the value of the underlying MCI-WorldCom deal? while C&W is still considered the leading candidate to buy the remaining MCI assets, MCI could try to sell to another buyer if it can fetch a higher price. C&W's suit is designed to make sure the company remains at the top of MCI's short list of potential bidders --------------------------------- Little Potential Penalty for MCI Despite C&W's lawsuit and a provision in the agreement that requires MCI not to shop its assets elsewhere, the penalty for MCI doing so is fairly light. If MCI backs out of the agreement, it would have to pay C&W $25 million, a sum that could easily be recovered from another, higher bid. And MCI seems willing to explore all options, particularly if it might benefit its shareholders, said one person close to MCI. --------------------------------------- Justice Department officials have indicated that they wouldn't agree to a sale of Internet assets to one of the existing major players such as GTE Corp., but might approve a sale to AT&T Corp., lawyers close to the discussions said. While AT&T's chairman, C. Michael Armstrong, recently indicated that AT&T might be interested in bidding for the MCI asset, a handoff to AT&T isn't likely because "they're the sworn enemy of MCI," said one executive close to MCI. AT&T doesn't comment on its acquisition plans. ------------------------------------------- Wednesday, one executive close to the discussions with regulators said MCI and WorldCom are "going to have to make some changes" in their divestiture plans. Among the new assets to be given up: several thousand corporate Internet customers, as well as more than 200,000 consumer Internet users. ------------------------------------------------- Mr. Klein and his staff have talked regularly with MCI-WorldCom, but he has allowed the Europeans to take the lead in the antitrust review, primarily because of the EU's tighter deadline to reach a decision. Lawyers said the two regulatory bodies are in agreement that a divestiture has to take place before the merger can be cleared, making some adjustment of the deal inevitable. While the European regulators couldn't block the merger of two U.S. companies, they could effectively block it by depriving them of operational licenses in a critical market. ---------------------------------------------------------- IMHO: My main concern is will the sale of assets change the value of the underlying MCI/WCOM deal ? kind rgds ANANT