Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at WorldCom

Rating:
Summary: How Worldcom got where they are
Review: After reading the current news about Worldcom's executives on trial, I was intrigued to find a book to find out how these people got into the mess they did. Disconnected by Lynne Jeter was a great and fascinating read. I couldn't put the book down. I enjoyed getting to know the personalities behind the WorldCom fiasco.

I've always wondered how people in corporate world get ahead and build successful companies. Most do it day in and day out, a long uphill climb. But when the companies (like WorldCom and Enron) are on top, those executives can do no wrong. When the dust settles, however, we see that they were really crooks and cons. They spent most of their time silencing people inside their organizations and propagandizing how great they are to people outside.

This book not only gets me up to speed on the players in the Worldcom fiasco, it shows that people inside organizations have a responsibility to do the right thing, for their other co-workers, for shareholders, and for america.

Since the story doesn't end with the book, I am now more interested in how the Worldcom story ends.

Rating:
Summary: Fluff
Review: I found this book to be very basic and lacking details of the actual events that brought this company down. One minute you are reading about the genral morale of the office then all of a sudden there is a reference to "cooking the books" or something to the effect that this company is going to fall like a deck of cards. No where do you get the details of the actions that actually took place.If I wanted fluff I could have just watched some TV news stories on the company.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing gossip
Review: I was expecting to learn about the actual frauds committed, to gain some indepth analysis I couldn't get from reading the papers. Jeter quite clearly does not have an accounting background, not that it would have been necessary to write this book. But she didn't take the time to understand the accounting issues and present them, and its really the accounting fraud that's at the heart of the WorldCom scandal. The financial information that was included was listed without any analysis. In one of the early chapters, Jeter ends a paragraph with a sentence declaring that WorldCom's assets were worth the same amount as their liabilities and shareholder's equity. As if a balance sheet balancing is some sort of revelation.
I found the only information provided in this book was more along the lines of kitchen gossip. I learned about the eating habits of Bernie Ebbers, various attenuated relations between key figures and legends of Mississippi college football, and the decor of Sullivan's mansion. The quotes from former WorldCom employees were irrelevant and unhelpful. For example, she describes a high level executive by quoting a former employee who didn't know the man but frequently rode the elevator with him. The employee's helpful analysis of the personality and motivations of the executive in question? He seemed to button his shirts awful tight.
This book is useless dribble. Not worth the cost of shipping. Do a search on WSJ.com and you'll learn more.

Rating:
Summary: Lynne Jeter did a great job in writing this book.
Review: Lynne Jeter has done an amazing job of capturing the true deceit and betrayal in corporate America. This book is very well written and a "must read" for any person interested in WorldCom's fall from the top of the telecommunications world.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Reporting
Review: Some background: In 1986 I was hired by a regional long-distance carrier, based in Boca Raton, Florida, to fill a temp position in their line costs department. The company's name was Microtel and it was one of the upstart telco's that arose when Judge Green handed down his decision to break up ATT. Two and a half years later, I'd gone from temp to analyst to supervisor to Manager of Line Cost Administration; Microtel, had acquired a half dozen smaller, weaker telcos, and had, itself, recently been swallowed by Atlanta-based ATC (Advanced Telecommunications Corporation).

The environment in the brand-new long-distance industry of that time is best summed up by two statements made to me after I'd been hired. The first was by an analyst who'd been there a few months. "This is an industry that runs on testosterone," she told me. The other came when I asked my department manager what authorizations I'd need to start a certain project. "Damn the paperwork," he said. "Get it done and we'll worry about paperwork later."

In her book, "Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at WorldCom," Lynne Jeter does a remarkable job of capturing the entrepreneurial, over-the-top spirit that was the hallmark of the telecom industry at its outset, and of WorldCom, in particular, from the time Bernie Ebbers took its helm when it was still called LDDS to its demise and the aftermath. Think of thousands of Mom and Pop enterprises, each on steroids, each trying to grab weak competitors, knowing survival depended on growth, forced to keep the profit margin high in order to continue making acquisitions in order to keep surviving. A deadly and exhausting treadmill.

Jeter's writing matches her subject: it's compelling, urging us from one paragraph to the next, one chapter to the next, one episode in the life of LDDS/WorldCom to the next.

But this is a book that doesn't merely tackle the rise and fall of a business and its subsequent economic effect; Jeter keeps the priority where it belongs: "Disconnected..." is mainly the story of the people who started WorldCom, the rivals who feared it, its employees, from top to bottom, and the people in the community where it was based who were proud such a giant was birthed in Mississippi. It is a very human story.

Well-researched throughout, with both financial documentation and personal quotes and anecdotes from knowledgeable people, Ms. Jeter is savvy enough to not point a finger at the culprits likely to have pulled down WorldCom, or to lead the reader to a predetermined conclusion. Rather, she lays out the evidence and lets us decide for ourselves. Throughout, this is reportage at its best, not tainted by opinion.

Bernie Ebbers guided WorldCom almost from its beginning, although he claimed, "I am not a technology dude." But Jeter includes a telling illustration that provides insight for why Ebbers was so successful. Before LDDS came along, Ebbers was an entrepreneur who owned some motels and a restaurant. One day he told a friend, "You've got to slice tomatoes this thick because that's where a lot of your profit is." From there to running a multi-billion dollar company, he was a man who knew where the profit was.

Little touches like that separate the finer writers from the rest, and make interesting stories from lifeless facts.

But, the other major player in the company's demise was WorldCom's Chief Financial Officer, Scott Sullivan, who authorized or ordered the accounting entries that have since been called into question for overstating profits.

Oddly, I met Sullivan in 1990, in his pre-WorldCom days. He'd been with my company, ATC, only a few weeks as our number two man in Finance, but was new to the telecom field. As Manager of Line Costs, I was working late one night, trying to trace why a large amount of line usage wasn't reconciling to dollars. I determined the answer was in a report compiled by another department and walked over to see. Scott came in a few minutes after me. He'd been trying to figure out the same problem from a preliminary report he'd received. I found the error and showed it to him. He disagreed; he didn't understand that the behavior of usage through multiple switches in multiple switching systems over multiple lines, inherited from companies acquired over a half dozen years, could result in double counted minutes. I explained it and answered his questions. Polite and attentive throughout, when I'd made my case, Scott thanked me, shook my hand and left.

A few weeks later I left ATC, having decided the ninety-hour weeks weren't worth the paycheck. Over the years, I lost touch with my coworkers and then with the industry itself. ATC became a paragraph on my resume.

So, imagine my surprise when I picked up "Disconnected..." and saw Scott Sullivan's name and read of the heights he had reached at WorldCom. And then, imagine my shock when I neared the end of the book and read about the charges the SEC had leveled at Sullivan.

It makes me wonder whether, while I was teaching him how to not double count usage, Scott, bright and nimble-minded as he is, was figuring out ways to use the information to prop up company share price, and of course, his own personal stake in the company. I hope not. He seemed like a nice guy.

But, as we all knew, back when Judge Green handed down his decision, the door opened for billions to be made...if someone could just figure out how.

Lynne Jeter shows us that a few did figure out how, and tells us what happened when keeping those billions became too, too tempting.

Rating:
Summary: Insightful!
Review: This account by Lynne W. Jeters, a Mississippi business journalist, is readable though somewhat disorganized. You will come away with a better sense of the environment of good old boy networking that allowed Bernie Ebbers, a country motel operator, to become CEO of one of the hottest, most corrupt companies America ever produced. WorldCom, even more than Enron, epitomizes the greed, blindness and folly that afflicted the U.S. stock markets in the 1990s. The book needed a stronger editorial hand, but we on the whole finds it is a useful, illuminating addition to the sagas of Wall Street scandals.

Rating:
Summary: The story is in the people.
Review: This book was really enjoyable to read. It was straight forward and informative but without taking sides or making excuses for the company which I expected, considering the author was a Mississippian, the home of WorldCom. The only negative I've seen about the book is that it isn't full of accounting analysis about the company and the fraud itself. I think that's the point. The fraud is as simple minded and immature. You have a very high profile, international company so crucial to the world's telecommunication system and yet Scott Sullivan pulls the most blatant of frauds by just posting as expenses line costs that weren't. There's really nothing complicated or sophisticated about the move. It's not like Enron that created layer upon layer of fraud and deceit. Indeed, we now see that Scott Sullivan is planning to use the "but everybody else does it" defense.

The key in the tale lies in the mindset of the management team operating in the insular world of the Mississippi business climate. Also the look at how Bernie Ebbers went from a man selling stock in the company literally door to door facing his neighbors, to being a "front man" on Wall Street and deceiving the business community there with the help of Jack Grubman was incredible. That's where the story is.

I agree the book is probably not for someone who is looking for an accounting mystery. That just wasn't the case at WorldCom.
But the look at the people and their manner of dealing with others and the growing arrogance, tells the tale.

Rating:
Summary: Personal Look
Review: This book was really enjoyable to read. It was straight forward and informative but without taking sides or making excuses for the company which is what I expected, considering the author is from Mississippi, the home of WorldCom. The only negative I've seen about the book is that it isn't full of accounting analysis
about the company and the fraudulent activy. I think that's the point. The fraud is as simple minded and immature as it gets. You have a very high profile company so crucial to the world's telecommunications system yet Scott Sullivan pulls the most transparent of frauds by posting as expenses line costs, which of course weren't. There's nothing really complicated or sophisticated about the move. It's not like Enron, a company that created layer upon layer of fraud and deception. Indeed we now see that Sullivan is planning to use the "but everybody else is doing it" defense.
The key in the tale lies in the mindset of the management team operating in the insular world of the Mississippi business climate. Also the look at how Bernie Ebbers went from a man selling stock in the company literally door to door facing his neighbors, to being a "front man" on Wall Street and fooling the business community there with the help of Jack Grubman was incredible. That's where the story is.
I agree the book is probably not for someone looking for an accounting mystery. That just wasn't the case at WorldCom. The people and their attitudes are the story. It takes an arrogance to believe one can get away with what was done and it's all there in the book.

Rating:
Summary: It's what MOST of us are looking for..
Review: When I picked this book off the store shelf I was happy to see that it told the story for the 99% of us who AREN'T MBAs.
After reading it I found it to be clear, concise and with enough detail to tell the story without being boring. It almost reads like a southern novel but amazingly it's true. To keep a business book entertaining AND informative is quite a feat.
The haphazard way the company was grown, run and promoted with hardly a single analyst on Wall Street or investigator in the SEC having a clue to the truth of its financial condition, should make us all afraid of who we're trusting with our investment dollars.
Most of all however I appreciated Jeter's straightforward narrative without the opinion or prejudice we might normally see.
There will, I'm sure, be thick volumes on the market that will tell every excruciating detail of every move the company made,
but I'll let the MBAs get giddy over that. I just hope they get the big picture while they're doing it.
This book has been the best source of information in one place that I've encountered so far and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know the story and enjoy the time spent reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Introduction to Worldcom
Review: Why to buy this book: This book will bring you up to speed on WorldCom.

What this book does: (1) gives a fact-based history of Worldcom from start (1984) to just past the end (December, 2002), (2) identifies and discusses key figures in the rise and fall, (3) introduces the foibles of Ebbers, (3) critiques the clash of corporate culture following of MCI acquisition (4) describes accounting coverup in broad terms (5) suggests four reasons for the fall: denial of Sprint takeover by Justice Department, inability to integrate and manage MCI, costly excess capacity entering the business slowdown of 2000-2003, Ebbers inadequacies.

What this book does not: (1) provide acceptable levels of detail in the acquisitions, (2) give enough detail for the strengths and weaknesses of key figures, (3) provide sufficient detail about the accounting cover up, (4) thoroughly analyze each of the reasons the reasons for the fall.

The author is somewhat confused by accounting terms, and perhaps about what the accounting issues were.

After reading this book, you will be ready for (and need to read) the next books that come out on WorldComm. At least, I want to know more about it.

Having panned the book, I still would recommend it to my students.