MCI, Inc.

(d/b/a Verizon Business) is an American telecommunications corporation, currently a subsidiary of Verizon Communications, with its main office inAshburn, Virginia. The corporation was formed originally as a result of the merger of WorldCom and MCI Communications corporations, and used the name MCI WorldCom succeeded by WorldCom before changing its name to the present version on April 12, 2003 as part of the corporation's ending of its bankruptcy status. The company traded on NASDAQ with the symbols "WCOM" (pre-bankruptcy) and "MCIP" (post-bankruptcy). The corporation [1] was purchased by Verizon Communications with the deal finalizing on January 6, 2006, and is now identified as that company's Verizon Business division with the local residential divisions being integrated slowly into local Verizon subsidiaries. For a time, WorldCom was the United States's second largest long distance telephone company (after AT&T). WorldCom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, most notably MCI [citation needed] Communications. It also owned the Tier 1 ISP UUNET, a major part of the internet backbone. It [2][3] was headquartered in Clinton, Mississippi, before being relocated to Virginia.
Contents [hide]

1 History

o o o o o o

1.1 Corporate founding 1.2 MCI acquisition 1.3 Proposed Sprint merger 1.4 Accounting scandals 1.5 Bankruptcy 1.6 Post-bankruptcy

2 In the media 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

History[edit]
Corporate founding[edit]
The company began as Long Distance Discount Services, Inc. (LDDS) during 1983, based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. During 1985 LDDS selected Bernard Ebbers (born 1941) to be its CEO. The company became traded publicly as a corporation during 1989 as a result of a merger with Advantage Companies Inc. The company name was changed to LDDS WorldCom during 1995. The company grew rapidly during the 1990s. Among the companies that were bought or merged with WorldCom were Advanced Communications Corp. (1992), Metromedia Communication Corp. (1993), Resurgens Communications Group(1993), IDB Communications Group, Inc (1994), Williams Technology

Group, Inc. (1995), and MFS Communications Company (1996), and MCI during 1998. The acquisition of MFS included UUNET Technologies, Inc., which had been acquired by MFS shortly before the merger with WorldCom. During February 1998, WorldCom purchased, by a complex transaction, online pioneer company CompuServe from its parent company H&R Block. WorldCom then retained the CompuServe Network Services Division, sold its online service to America Online, and received AOL's network division, ANS. The acquisition of Digex (DIGX) during June 2001 was also complex; Worldcom acquired Digex's corporate parent, Intermedia Communications, and then sold all of Intermedia's non-Digex assets to Allegiance Telecom.

MCI acquisition[edit]

MCI WorldCom logo (Used from 19982000).

On November 4, 1997, WorldCom and MCI Communications announced their US$37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom, making it the largest corporate merger of US history. On September 15, 1998 the new company, MCI WorldCom, opened for business, after MCI divested itself of its successful [4] "internetMCI" business to gain approval from the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

Proposed Sprint merger[edit]

WorldCom logo (Used from 20002003).

On October 5, 1999 Sprint Corporation and MCI WorldCom announced a $129 billion merger agreement between the two companies. Had the deal been completed, it would have been the largest corporate merger in history, causing MCI WorldCom to be even larger than AT&T and therefore the largest communications company in the United States. However, the deal did not finalize because of opposition from the US Department of Justice and theEuropean Union on concerns of it creating a monopoly. On July 13, 2000, the boards of directors of both companies terminated the merger process. Later that year, MCI WorldCom renamed itself simply "WorldCom".

Accounting scandals[edit]
CEO Bernard Ebbers became very wealthy from the increasing price of his holdings in WorldCom [5] common stock. However, beginning in the year 2000 the telecommunications industry was declining and WorldComs aggressive growth strategy suffered a serious setback when it was forced by the US [5] Justice Department to abandon its proposed merger with Sprint during mid-2000. By that time, WorldComs stock price was decreasing and banks were placing increasing demands on Ebbers to cover margin calls on his WorldCom stock that was used to finance his other businesses (timber and [5] yachting, among others). During 2001, Ebbers persuaded WorldComs board of directors to provide him [5] corporate loans and guarantees in excess of $400 million to cover his margin calls. The board hoped

that the loans would avert the need for Ebbers to sell substantial amounts of his WorldCom stock, as his doing so would result in further decrease of the stock's price. However, this strategy failed and Ebbers resigned as CEO during April 2002 and was replaced by John Sidgmore, former CEO of UUNET Technologies, Inc. Beginning modestly during mid-year 1999 and continuing at an accelerated pace through May 2002, the company (directed by Ebbers (as CEO), Scott Sullivan (CFO), David Myers (Controller) and Buford "Buddy" Yates (Director of General Accounting)) used fraudulent accounting methods to disguise its [5] decreasing earnings to maintain the price of WorldComs stock. The fraud was accomplished primarily in two ways: 1. Booking line costs (interconnection expenses with other telecommunication companies) as capital expenditures on the balance sheet instead of expenses. 2. Inflating revenues with bogus accounting entries from "corporate unallocated revenue accounts". During 2002, a small team of internal auditors at WorldCom worked together, often at night and secretly, [6][7][8] to investigate and reveal $3.8 billion worth of fraud. Soon thereafter, the companys audit committee and board of directors were notified of the fraud and acted swiftly: Sullivan was dismissed, Myers resigned, Arthur Andersen company withdrew its audit opinion for 2001, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began an investigation into these matters on June 26, 2002 (see accounting scandals). By the end of 2003, it was estimated that the company's total assets had been [5] inflated by about $11 billion.

Bankruptcy[edit]
On July 21, 2002, WorldCom filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the largest such filing in United States history at the time (since overtaken by the bankruptcies of both Lehman Brothers andWashington Mutual in a span of eleven days during September 2008). The WorldCom bankruptcy proceedings were held before U.S. Federal Bankruptcy Judge Arthur J. Gonzalez who simultaneously heard the Enron bankruptcy proceedings which were the second largest bankruptcy case resulting from one of the largest corporate fraud scandals. None of the criminal proceedings against WorldCom and its officers and agents was originated by referral from Gonzalez or the Department of Justice lawyers. By the bankruptcy reorganization agreement, the company paid $750 million to the SEC in cash and stock in the new MCI, which was intended to be paid to wronged investors. On April 14, 2003, WorldCom changed its name to MCI and relocated its corporate headquarters from Clinton, Mississippi, to Dulles, Virginia. During May 2003, the company was given a no-bid contract by the United States Department of Defense to build a cellular telephone network in Iraq. The deal has been criticized by competitors and others who cite the company's lack of experience with that technology. The SEC and Worldcom concluded a deal in which Worldcom agreed to pay a civil penalty of $2.25 [9] billion. The deal was approved by federal judge Jed Rakoff during July 2003. In a sweeping consent decree, the SEC and Rakoff essentially took control of Worldcom. Rakoff appointed former SEC chairman Richard C. Breeden to oversee Worldcom's compliance with the SEC agreement. Breeden actively involved himself with the management of the company, and prepared a report for Rakoff, titled Restoring Trust, in which he proposed extensive corporate governance reforms, as part of an effort to

"cast the new MCI into what he hoped would become a model of how shareholders should be protected [10] and how companies should be run."

Post-bankruptcy[edit]

Bernard Ebbers.

The company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy during 2004 with about $5.7 billion in debt and $6 billion in cash. About half of the cash was intended to pay various claims and settlements. Previous bondholders ended up being paid 35.7 cents on the dollar, in bonds and stock in the new MCI company. The previous stockholders' stock was cancelled, making it totally worthless. It had yet to pay many of its creditors, who had waited for two years for a portion of the money owed. Many of the small creditors included former employees, primarily those who were dismissed during June 2002 and whose severance and benefits were withheld when WorldCom filed for bankruptcy. On August 7, 2002, the exWorldCom 5100 group was begun. It was composed of former WorldCom employees with a common goal of seeking full payment of severance pay and benefits based on the WorldCom Severance Plan. The "5100" stands for the number of WorldCom employees dismissed on [11] June 28, 2002 before WorldCom filed for bankruptcy. On February 14, 2005, Verizon Communications agreed to acquire MCI for $7.6 billion. On March 15, 2005 Bernard Ebbers was found guilty of all charges and convicted of fraud, conspiracy and filing false documents with regulators- all related to the $11 billion accounting scandal. Other former WorldCom officials charged with criminal penalties in relation to the company's financial misstatements include former CFO Scott Sullivan (entered a guilty plea on March 2, 2004 to one count [12] each of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and filing false statements), former comptroller David Myers (pleaded guilty to securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and [13] filing false statements on September 27, 2002), former accounting director Buford Yates (pleaded guilty [14] to conspiracy and fraud charges on October 7, 2002), and former accounting managers Betty Vinson [15] and Troy Normand (both pleading guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud on October 10, 2002). On July 13, 2005 Bernard Ebbers received a sentence that would keep him imprisoned for 25 years. At time of sentencing, Ebbers was 63 years old. On September 26, 2006, Ebbers surrendered himself to the Federal Bureau of Prisons prison at Oakdale, Louisiana, the Oakdale Federal Corrections Institution to begin serving his sentence.

During March 2005, 16 of WorldCom's 17 former underwriters reached settlements with the [16] [17] investors. Citigroup settled for $2.65 billion on May 10, 2004. During December 2005, the Microsoft corporation announced that MCI will join it by providing Windows Live Messenger customers "Voice Over Internet Protocol" (VoIP) service to make telephone calls. This was MCI's last new product- called "MCI Web Calling". After the merger, this product was renamed "Verizon Web Calling".