The New World Order

If you want a revolution, call a revolutionary. While other phone-company executives huddle with consultants, lawyers, and investment bankers to figure out how they can position their companies in the new world of deregulated telecommunications, Bernard J. Ebbers is at the ramparts. A onetime high school coach who fell into telecom through a lucky investment with some pals in Mississippi, Ebbers is now showing industry veterans what the new era in communications is all about. After a series of deals that took his company, now known as WorldCom Inc., from an idea in a coffee shop to the No. 4 in long-distance, this outsider has proposed a stunning takeover--potentially the largest merger in U.S. history--to produce the first new-era telecom giant.

First thing in the morning on Oct. 1, Ebbers picked up the phone in a New York hotel and called Bert C. Roberts Jr., chief executive officer of MCI Communications Corp. Roberts wasn't in, but he returned the call at about 8:30. Ebbers calmly informed the MCI exec that WorldCom, which had revenues of just $5.6 billion last year, was ready to proceed with an unsolicited offer for MCI, the No. 2 long-distance company, which had $18.5 billion in sales last year. Never mind that Roberts had recently gone through wrenching negotiations to re-price a long-anticipated merger with British Telecommunications PLC. Ebbers would top BT's $19 billion deal--offering $30 billion in stock and the assumption of $5 billion in debt.