When C. Michael Armstrong became chairman and chief executive of AT&T last fall, he inherited what looked to be one of America's last business dinosaurs: balky Baby Bells were frustrating Ma Bell's costly drive into the $110 billion local service market, a much-publicized mass layoff of 40,000 employees had failed to boost business, and worst of all, the largest U.S. telephone company (1997 revenues: $51.3 billion) was stuck on the sidelines, while upstarts such as WorldCom and MCI were teaming to deliver everything from long-distance service to high-speed Internet access. "This marvelous industry was growing in double digits globally," Armstrong explains. "The only trouble was, AT&T was not participating in that growth."
What to do? One road led through cable guy John Malone, the deal-happy boss of Tele-Communications, Inc. What better way for AT&T to provide local calling--plus a full package of communications and entertainment services--than to scoop up TCI, the second-largest U.S. cable operator after Time Warner? Never mind that the final price of $31.5 billion in AT&T stock was a lofty $8.5 billion premium over TCI's market value. Or that Malone's cable-TV wires, which run through neighborhoods with 33 million homes (about a third of all U.S. households), were mostly a year or more away from the upgrades needed to carry two-way phone traffic. Or even that Malone's record as a visionary was far from shining--witness the collapse of his dream for a 500-channel universe, or the demise of his 1993 agreement to merge with Bell Atlantic. Mike Armstrong was looking to buy.
Armstrong's vision of the new AT&T is simple enough: hooking up AT&T and TCI (1997 revenues: $7.6 billion) "will enable us to offer a full portfolio of services with one connection from one company. And this is a big deal." So big, in fact, that there was a hint of desperation about the merger, which sped to a conclusion after just eight days of talks in the Manhattan offices of Wachtell, Lipton, AT&T's legal counsel. "Time was closing in on us," says Armstrong, who at 59 remains a man in a hurry who relaxes by roaring down roads on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Concurs Ken McGee, a vice president for the Gartner Group consulting firm: "This merger is a matter of pure survival for AT&T. There is no other chance behind this one."
News of the deal rang bells from Wall Street to Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. Investors drove up the price of cable- company stocks on the hope that more buyouts would follow. But Wall Street was less than gaga about AT&T, whose stock closed Friday at $56.75, down a whopping $8.625--or 13.1%--since Armstrong unveiled the deal. "Wall Street is missing the point," says Stuart Conrad, the head of telecommunications research for Deutsche Bank Securities. "This is one of the best things that AT&T could have done."