AT&T-BellSouth Merger May Force Job Cuts

Wow. First AT&T Merges with SBC, and now its Bellsouth. Does anyone else smell a monopoly? In addition to that, 10,000 more Americans are going to lose their jobs. But it isn't a big deal though. I mean, the everything is great, like some in this forum believe. I mean, I can't find another ISP other than AT&T which doesn't require a yearly contract or $100 setup fee.





By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer 1 hour, 17 minutes ago

NEW YORK - AT&T Inc. plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs, mostly through normal turnover, if its $67 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp. is approved by shareholders and regulators, AT&T's chief financial officer said Monday.
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The work force reduction would take place over three years, AT&T's Rick Lindner said. Before the cuts, the combined company would have around 317,000 employees, including Cingular Wireless LLC, which is now an AT&T-BellSouth joint venture.

The new company would be the country's largest phone company — with nearly half of all lines. It also would be the largest cell-phone carrier and the largest provider of broadband Internet service.

Still, investors and analysts expect it to pass regulatory muster due to the fact that phone companies are facing increasing competition, especially from cable operators.

The acquisition, which was announced Sunday, is expected to close next year.

The 10,000 planned job cuts are in addition to the 26,000 cuts AT&T has already announced — 13,000 due to SBC's acquisition of AT&T Corp., which closed in November, and 13,000 due to shifting priorities in the business. The combined SBC-AT&T took the name AT&T Inc.

At the Communications Workers of America, which would have about 200,000 workers at the combined company, spokeswoman Candice Johnson said the merger would be a "good opportunity for job growth" as the company expands into new technologies.

"We're not looking for job losses at all," Johnson said. The union has not yet endorsed the merger.

San Antonio-based AT&T expects the acquisition to save it $2 billion annually at first, increasing to $3 billion a year by 2010.

Slightly more than one third of the savings would come from reduced labor costs and consolidation of support functions and corporate staff, Lindner said.

The combined company would be based in San Antonio, depriving Atlanta of one of its largest corporate headquarters.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said Monday they both will fly to Texas soon to try to persuade AT&T's executives to move their headquarters to Atlanta.

"It's hard to replace BellSouth," Franklin said. "They've contributed so much over the last decade. We're anxious for their national headquarters to move here."

Cingular's headquarters would remain in Atlanta.

More savings from the proposed acquisition would come from reduced advertising expenses and combining the companies' backbone network and information-technology operations.

"Over the last couple of years as we have operated Cingular and our Yellow Pages venture, it became clear that there was a lot of duplication that could be eliminated," said Duane Ackerman, chief executive of BellSouth.

"This merger will allow us to move to a single brand for wireline, for wireless, for business and consumer, and that's AT&T," said Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief operating officer. "A single brand is much more cost efficient and far more effective."

Under the terms of the deal, AT&T is paying 1.325 of its own shares for each BellSouth share. AT&T shares closed Monday down 97 cents, or 3.5 percent, at $27.02 on the
New York Stock Exchange.

That put the value of the offer at $35.80 per BellSouth share. Those shares rose $3.04, or 9.7 percent, to close Monday at $34.50.

The narrow difference between AT&T's offer and the market price for BellSouth shares indicated that investors believe the merger is almost certain to get through regulators.

AT&T plans to buy back stock worth at least $10 billion in the next two years, effectively paying for the premium given to BellSouth shareholders in cash, executives said.

David Kaut, a telecom regulatory analyst at the financial services firm Stifel Nicolaus & Co., said the merger would likely gain approval with modest conditions, such as the sell-off of business lines in overlapping territories.

One wild card, he said, may be
Federal Communications Commission nominee Robert McDowell, a Republican who would take the open seat at the commission if approved by the Senate. McDowell is a lobbyist on behalf of the local phone carriers that compete with the Bells and could be more open to their concerns.

"We don't think he's going to go completely off the reservation and try to block" the merger, said Kaut. "He would probably try to work out some conditions that allow the deal to happen but also address competitive concerns."

Regulators are likely to buy the telephone companies' argument that other technologies will provide sufficient competition, Merrill Lynch analyst David Janazzo wrote in a research report.

Telephone companies are losing a few percent of their phone customers every year to cable, Internet and wireless telephony.

Janazzo also noted that the deal would not change the competitive landscape among cellular carriers, because Cingular is already an AT&T-BellSouth joint venture.

Justice Department officials said the proposed purchase would be reviewed by antitrust regulators, but offered no assessment of whether it was likely to generate objections.

The merger also needs approval from state regulators.

If either company calls off the merger, it may have to pay the other company $1.7 billion, according to a regulatory filing by AT&T on Monday.

The deal would substantially expand the reach of AT&T, already the country's largest telecommunications company by the number of customers served. BellSouth is the dominant local telephone provider in the Southeast.

The merged company would have 70 million local-line phone customers, 54.1 million wireless subscribers and nearly 10 million broadband subscribers in the 22 states where they now operate.

 

In canada its already a full blown monopoly with phones and cable so this really doesnt concern us at all. Job cuts, job cuts, job cuts, business is business though, not pleasent but necessary in mergers.

 

Yeah, we went over this in one of my law classes tonight. It will be interesting to see how they all come back together as one unit when they were broken up qutie a few years back

 

The "end of the world" doom and gloom can't seem to disguise itself from reality

 

That put the value of the offer at $35.80 per BellSouth share. Those shares rose $3.04, or 9.7 percent, to close Monday at $34.50. """

Damn it, I should have bought more Bellsouth stocks last year !!!!!!
anyway those 10,000 job cuts would most likely be from retirement and work attrition... ohh well I see cash flow ......


"The union has not yet endorsed the merger."

don't think they will...but that's business - life goes on.


""" I mean, I can't find another ISP other than AT&T which doesn't require a yearly contract or $100 setup fee."""


lol - those other companies need to milk us for more money .....