Big news today that AT&T put together a mega deal over the weekend to acquire rival T-Mobile USA for $39 billion, the largest transaction of the year. If okayed by regulators, it would create an industry leader with almost 130 million customers. Second place Verizon Wireless has 94.1 million.
The reason the transaction caught my eye is that I was with an equipment financing company acquired by AT&T in 1989 or so. We were the largest in our specialized field, which is why we were attractive as an acquiree, and by far the most knowledgeable and sophisticated organization of our type in the U.S. and likely, the world. Our business was an industry leader and respected by all.
That's why I thought it remarkable that the day after the acquisition took place, "experts" from the acquirer gave us a detailed list of great length telling us about all the changes we'd have to make to be in compliance with their systems, regulations, policies and reporting formats, making no matter that this would completely eliminate our competitive edge and negate most of the features through which we outperformed our competition. It was like having a world class sprinter being forced to compete with his legs tied together. Bottom line, in not too long a time they sold us, I myself however was long gone by then.
Then in 1991, AT&T acquired the National Cash Register Company (NCR), maker of the first mechanical cash registers founded in 1884 by John H. Patterson. They changed the name to AT&T Global Information Solutions in 1994, then spun it off to AT&T shareholders in 1997, as an independent, publicly-traded company, once again called NCR.
The point of all this is that AT&T seems to be an organization that's weighted down by all kinds of both, internal and external issues that continually get in its way. And by the time they realize that they need to make substantive managerial and philosophical changes, it's too late. So being acquired by them isn't so much a matter of clashes of corporate culture, it's more like dropping a boulder into a bottomless pit.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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