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To: Mazman who wrote (3578)	12/14/1998 1:24:00 PM
From: paul t	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11568

Can anyone verify or shoot holes in.... selling IT to EDS, Lucent thanks paul:-)

To: Mazman who wrote (3578)	12/14/1998 3:58:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 11568

Sydney Morning Herald: $520m bid for OzEmail a $118m win for Sean Tuesday, December 15, 1998 By MORGAN MELLISH and ELISABETH SEXTON Mr Sean Howard stands to receive $118 million for his stake in the Internet company he founded four years ago after MCI WorldCom offered $520 million in cash for OzEmail yesterday. The friendly $US2.20 ($3.54 at Friday's exchange rate) per share bid by America's second biggest long-distance phone company ended weeks of takeover speculation. Mr Howard intends to stay with MCI and said yesterday that he had not considered how he would invest his windfall. Linking up with a global partner was "inevitable" in the fast-growing internet business, the 38-year-old said. Other big winners will be two early backers of Australia's homegrown Internet service provider, OzEmail's chairman Mr Malcolm Turnbull and director Mr Trevor Kennedy. Yesterday both said they intended to sell their 13 per cent OzEmail stakes for $59 million each in the absence of a higher bid. Their 1995 seed capital is thought to have been less than $1 million each. Both met Mr Howard when they were working at Mr Kerry Packer's Consolidated Press Holdings in 1984. Earlier this year Mr Howard recalled his first dealings with Mr Packer, when the magazine publisher wanted to take a stake in a 24-year-old Mr Howard's first business venture, a computer magazine. Mr Howard apparently suggested a cheeky price for a share of Australian Personal Computer. "Packer said, 'You make Ned Kelly look like a f---ing princess'," Mr Howard told the Herald in April. If his opening ambit impressed Mr Packer - it must have, the joint venture went ahead - it's encore provides a rare example of the one that got away from the billionaire. When Mr Howard left ConsPress 10 years later, he took with him an obscure infant business involving electronic mail, which he later named OzEmail. Mr Kennedy yesterday described Mr Howard as "very bright and very commercial". Mr Turnbull said Mr Howard was "a genuinely brilliant person who has the capacity to see before others what technology is capable of doing". Mr Howard said there would be no major change in strategy for the Internet company if MCI WorldCom's $520 million takeover bid, which is conditional upon 90 per cent acceptance, succeeds. However, Mr Howard said the bid had forced the company to put on hold plans to raise $400 million through debt and equity issues mainly in the US to build new cable networks in Australia's major cities and more telecommunications services. He said the OzEmail name would probably be kept. "It's a good brand name and, I can't speak for MCI, but I think they would want to retain the brand name," he said. As part of the deal, OzEmail has issued 21.9 million shares to MCI's Australian subsidiary, UUNET, at $US2 ($3.22) a share, giving it a 14.9 per cent stake. This part of the deal will stand, if the non-associated shareholders who speak for 40 per cent of the company reject the offer, which is in either US or Australian dollars. Mr Howard said the board would make a recommendation to minority shareholders once MCI released its Part A takeover document. "Each shareholder will have to make up his or her own mind as to the adequacy of the offer. We've said that we'll accept the offer and that speaks for itself," he said. Mr Howard said the share issue was to help meet continuing capital needs. OzEmail, which has 260,000 customers, already provides network services to UUNET. MCI WorldCom vice-chairman, Mr John Sidgmore, said: "The Asia-Pacific region is of key strategic importance to us and the synergies between OzEmail and MCI WorldCom are clear." Mr Sidgmore said fibre optic cable being laid here by UUNET would complement OzEmail's Internet presence and MCI's worldwide Internet resources would improve OzEmail users' "global connectivity". OzEmail shares ended up 19c at $3.58. They have risen 54 per cent over the past three weeks amid talk the company was a takeover target. Most of the speculation centred on C&W Optus and the world's largest Internet company, AOL. Hartley Poynton analyst, Mr Shane Hodson, said the offer wasn't as high as he expected. He said recent takeovers of Internet service providers in the US had taken place at five or six times forecast 2000 revenue. MCI's offer represents less than three times OzEmail's 2000 forecast revenue of about $200 million. OzEmail made a net loss of $11.2 million in the nine months to September despite revenue doubling to $78.6 million. "Given the price paid for Internet stocks in the US, the price being paid seems a little bit light," Mr Hodson said. OzEmail undertook a secondary listing on the Australian Stock Exchange in May issuing 3 million shares at $2.58. The shares listed at $3.65. They subsequently hit a high of $4.11 before slumping to $1.14 in early October as some of the gloss wore off the sector. OzEmail ADSs listed on NASDAQ in 1996, raising $US44.8 million at the equivalent of $US1.40 a share. smh.com.au

To: Mazman who wrote (3578)	12/14/1998 4:15:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11568

More info from this Australian Yahoo article: MCI Worldcom Launches Takeover Bid For Australia's OzEmail Monday 14 December, 1998 6:36 PM AEST By Adam Creed MCI Worldcom [NASDAQ:WCOM] announced plans Monday to takeover Australia's largest Internet service provider, OzEmail Ltd. [NASDAQ:OZEMY] [AUS:OZM]. The company revealed it has already acquired just under 15 percent of the ISP and made an offer for the remaining outstanding shares - an offer being recommended to shareholders by OzEmail executives. If successful, OzEmail will become the Australian arm of UUNET, MCI Worldcom's ISP subsidiary, and put the company into the leading position in the local Internet market. OzEmail is Australia's largest ISP, ahead of Telstra Corp.'s [AUS:TLSCA] BigPond Internet. MCI WorldCom says it has so far acquired 14.9 percent of OzEmail, amounting to 21,863,174 newly issued ordinary shares, at US$2.00 per share. The purchase was made via a share subscription agreement with the Australian company. Through its subsidiary, UUNET Holdings Australia Pty Ltd, the company has made a cash offer for all of the outstanding shares of the ISP at a price of US$22.00 per American depository receipt (one ADR is equivalent to ten Australian shares). This will bring the total offering to US$322.8 million. The OzEmail board of directors said in a statement that they intend to accept the offer. "The directors of the company indicated that, subject to reviewing the offer documents to be prepared by MCI WorldCom and, absent a more favorable offer, they intended to accept the offer." If a better offer is to come to the table the most likely candidate appears to be Cable & Wireless Optus Ltd, the Australian subsidiary of the UK's Cable & Wireless group. "Basically, Optus has four weeks to decide if it wants to bid higher," Ramin Marzbani, principal of Internet industry research firm, www.consult, told Newsbytes. News of the takeover bid comes after weekend press reports of cost-cutting at the operator thatcould see as many as 3,750 people loosing their jobs. Since the takeover of MCI by Worldcom earlier this year, the new group has been working to save on operating costs. In combining the networks of MCI and Worldcom the merged entity can avoid leasing capacity from other providers and route traffic along its own network. This leads to less costs for voice and data transmission services. With the purchase of OzEmail, MCI Worldcom gets access to an Internet backbone network in Australia, as well as OzEmail's capacity on the Southern Cross high speed transpacific cable project (Newsbytes, October 6, 1998), linking the US, New Zealand and Australia. Worldcom is also one of the major shareholders on the huge infrastructure project, along with Telecom New Zealand and Cable & Wireless Optus Ltd. "The Asia-Pacific region is of key strategic importance to us and the synergy between OzEmail and MCI WorldCom are clear," said MCI WorldCom vice chairman John Sidgmore. "The local fiber we are deploying in Australia complements OzEmail's Internet presence and the vast international resources of MCI WorldCom, particularly our worldwide Internet backbone, will bring improved global connectivity to OzEmail's customers." Also among OzEmail's assets is its growing IP telephony business, Interline. "The Interline voice-over-IP technology could be one of the main attractions for MCI Worldcom," said Stewart Carter, editor of the Electronic Commerce Report. "Interline now includes a consortium of international partners and recently clocked up its first million minutes of traffic," said Carter, speaking to Newsbytes. Although OzEmail's main strength in Australia has been at the retail end of the market, the cash injection from MCI Worldcom and the partnership with an established global telecommunications services company could widen its horizons significantly. "The deal would put the combined company in a better position to offer enterprise data, virtual private networking and intranet solutions," said Marzbani. Exchange Rate: $1 = A$1.61 yahoo.com.au