{"id":69,"date":"2007-07-15T07:53:57","date_gmt":"2007-07-15T15:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2011-03-29T12:51:23","modified_gmt":"2011-03-29T20:51:23","slug":"att","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"AT&#038;T"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"att.jpg\" href=\"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/att.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/att.jpg\" alt=\"att.jpg\" width=\"491\" height=\"277\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was in Brooklyn, NY a little while back and happened by this AT&amp;T office of some kind or another.<\/p>\n<p>It struck me that AT&amp;T&#8217;s byzantine history of acquisitions, dissolutions, name changes and other ownership vagaries is about as good it gets when trying to display the crazy corporate world of mega mergers. I happened to have owned some AT&amp;T stock since about 1983, not enough to make much of a difference in my life, but enough to keep track of how insane their dissolve and miraculous re-assimilations have been during that time.<\/p>\n<p>I thought the sign said it all.<\/p>\n<p>My broker told me after reading this post: &#8220;On AT&amp;T, the investment bakers and merger &amp; acquisition guys should thank the gov&#8217;t for breaking up Ma Bell.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The fees generated as a result have been herculean&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>1983:<\/strong> Plans for the breakup of AT&amp;T are approved, leading to the creation of independent, regional telephone companies and freeing AT&amp;T to enter non-telecommunications businesses.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1984:<\/strong> AT&amp;T is organized into two divisions, AT&amp;T Communications and AT&amp;T Technologies.<\/li>\n<li> <strong>1991:<\/strong> AT&amp;T acquires NCR Corporation, a computer maker, in a $7.4 billion transaction.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1993:<\/strong> AT&amp;T enters the cellular telephone business with the $12.8 billion acquisition of McCaw Cellular Communications.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1995:<\/strong> AT&amp;T announces it is splitting into three companies, AT&amp;T Corporation, Lucent Technologies, and NCR Corporation.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1999:<\/strong> AT&amp;T acquires cable television giant, Tele-Communications Inc., in a $53.5 billion deal.<\/li>\n<li><strong>1999:<\/strong> AT&amp;T outbids Comcast and Microsoft to acquire MediaOne Inc., making the company the nation&#8217;s largest operator of cable television. AT&amp;T logo disappears.<\/li>\n<li><strong>2001:<\/strong> Comcast acquires AT&amp;T Broadband for $72 billion. AT&amp;T spins off its cellphone business into AT&amp;T Wireless.<\/li>\n<li><strong>2004:<\/strong> AT&amp;T Wireless is sold for $41 billion to Cingular Wireless.<\/li>\n<li> 2005: AT&amp;T merged with SBC, itself a merger of some of the original AT&amp;T operating companies. AT&amp;T also regained the cellphone business it spun off a few years earlier because Cingular was owned by SBC.<\/li>\n<li> 2007: Guess what? AT&amp;T basically buys itself back from Cingular and thus is back to where it started, kinda, sorta.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a title=\"att.png\" href=\"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/att.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/att.png\" alt=\"att.png\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"attlarge.png\" href=\"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/attlarge.png\">attlarge.png<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was in Brooklyn, NY a little while back and happened by this AT&amp;T office of some kind or another. It struck me that AT&amp;T&#8217;s byzantine history of acquisitions, dissolutions, name changes and other ownership vagaries is about as good it gets when trying to display the crazy corporate world&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-my-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.interactivehank.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}