AP Photo/Rogelio Solis
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KING OF THE WORLDCOM
COMPANY MCI WorldCom, President and CEO
NET WORTH $1 billion
AGE 58
ADDRESS www.wcom.com
BIO Think of it as the tale of two telecommunications-company mergers--for Ebbers, it
was the best of years and the worst of years. A deeply religious man as well as a
legendary dealmaker, he continued to put together a telecom empire for the next
millennium. As of this year, about a third of the U.S. Internet traffic flowed
over MCI WorldCom's network. And the company is second only to AT&T among
long-distance carriers. Perhaps best of all, the company is making its initial
move into the all-important wireless world by acquiring SkyTel for $1.3 billion
in stock. One of the largest paging companies, SkyTel was the first to offer
two-way text messaging. At a meeting on Wall Street in June, a confident Ebbers,
who was WorldCom's chief executive before it merged with MCI, affirmed rosy
predictions that earnings would grow 40% this year.
After the merger in late 1997, Ebbers could do no wrong--anyway, until this
August, when the company, based in Jackson, Miss., faced an embarrassing customer
crisis. Part of the company's high-speed data network failed for an astonishing
10 days, causing a high-profile outage. The 3,000 business customers that were
affected included Internet service providers, banks and the Chicago Board of
Trade, whose after-hours trading system was one of the more notable casualties.
Ebbers blamed newly installed software from Lucent, but his company was
criticized for its slow reaction.
BEST LINE "I believe God has a plan for people's lives, and I believe he had a
plan for me ... You'll see people who in the early days of WorldCom took their
life savings and trusted this company with their money. And I have an awesome
responsibility to those people to make sure that they're done right."
FORWARD TILT To avoid a backward step, Ebbers must prevent customers who lost
business during the outage from going elsewhere. Then he can concentrate on
offering wireless broadband services, which some analysts expect by the end of
the year.
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