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The drumbeat of news about sleazy boardroom behavior has given investors someone to blame--fairly or not--for the money they have lost in stocks over the past two years. Seizing the moment, politicians are undertaking what could be the most sweeping structural reforms in the business world since the 1930s. The N.Y.S.E. has proposed stiff new rules for boards of directors, and the SEC has proposed changes in accounting and auditing procedures. The SEC has already imposed new rules to stamp out conflicts of interest among stock analysts.
Yet the accounting irregularities at WorldCom are much more than a continuation of a trend. This scandal sharply raises the stakes. When Enron filed for bankruptcy in December, it employed 28,000, of whom 12,600 have been let go. WorldCom employs 80,000 and will eliminate a fifth of those jobs almost immediately. The Enron-stock meltdown wiped out $67 billion of shareholder wealth, less than half what WorldCom investors have lost.
The losers include pension funds and mutual-fund investors across the country. And, as at Enron, WorldCom's 401(k) plan was full of company stock, socking employees with greatly diminished savings just when they are likely to need them the most. Says John Alexander, 31, a former WorldCom benefits manager: "Everything they ever told us was, 'We're making money hand over fist.'" Alexander lost $180,000, a large chunk of his life's savings.
Creditors and bondholders are also taking a hit as WorldCom struggles with its $32 billion of debt. Dozens of mutual funds, banks and financial-services firms are exposed, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and GE. Citigroup holds an estimated $335 million of WorldCom bonds and could face lawsuits as a result of its cozy ties to the telecom. In May 2001 Citigroup co-underwrote, along with J.P. Morgan Chase, an $11.9 billion WorldCom bond issue. Buyers of those bonds may move to sue the banks, claiming they failed to properly inspect WorldCom's books.
The developments at WorldCom suggest that accounting games may be more pervasive than we had thought. With Enron, the tricks involved complicated partnerships, off-the-books debt and exotic hedging techniques that made the firm's financial results difficult to assess even for pros. It seemed unlikely that anything so complex could be widespread. But with WorldCom, as House Financial Services Committee chairman Mike Oxley, an Ohio Republican, says, it looks like "good old-fashioned fraud." Oxley's committee subpoenaed Sidgmore, Sullivan, Ebbers and Jack Grubman, telecom analyst for the Salomon Smith Barney unit of Citigroup, to a July 8 hearing. Not to be outdone, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Billy Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, announced his investigation and ordered that by July 11 WorldCom turn over all records relating to its internal audit and five years' worth of accounting-related documents.