It seemed at the time a reasonable enough question. Ebbers had just engineered a deal in which WorldCom, a fair-sized but little known telecommunications company he ran from Jackson, Miss., would take over MCI, a phone company with a household name. In the highest profile merger battle in years, Ebbers beat out British Telecom and so became the biggest cheese in telecom. Ebbers didn't take the Times' advice. On Tuesday Ebbers and MCI announced a deal to buy Sprint in the biggest merger in U.S. history.
Regulators say they'll look closely at the competitive effects before allowing the merger.
For now, however, it's surely Ebbers' day. The rise of Bernie Ebbers bears comparison with the rise of the industrial tycoons of the 19th century. Forty years later, after buying out a string of competitors, he sold his steel holdings to J.P. Morgan. There is, however, one great difference between the Carnegies and Rockefellers of the 19th century and the mega-tycoons of today. We live in a far more rational, and arguably more honest, economic world.