BellSouth

"Balsillie recalls the ARDIS deal as the moment RIM put formidable U.S. carriers on notice that the Waterloo bantamweight could play just as rough as the big guys. Steering RIM, he says, meant being “massively scared shitless and fucking terrified” that carriers or competitors would one day toss the company over a cliff. After “trying to bob and weave” around bigger hitters for years, he saw a unique chance to grab the advantage when ARDIS came calling. He correctly gambled that BellSouth was in a corner because it had already signed its contract to buy the Leapfrog, a pager its network badly needed. Recalling the controversial transaction, Balsillie throws his hands in the air and breaks into a broad grin: “I played the leverage,” he laughs. “Welcome to business.”"

"I went off to a Christmas cruise in the Caribbean with about ten pounds of Paramount internal data to study. The bidding process had given each side the ability to top the other with a three-week pause between bids, and I was prepared for Viacom to raise the stakes. Which they did. Over the next months the bids went from $62 a share to $95, and the transaction now approached $9 billion. We both had to raise more equity. Redstone got Blockbuster to inject $500 million into Viacom, and we got Advance, the parent company of Condé Nast, as well as BellSouth, to come in with us. It was a grueling process, and the media followed each bid as if it were the longest horse race in history. At one stage, when Viacom had the leading bid, *New York* magazine put me on the cover with the headline MOGUL IN A MESS."

"The McCaw strategy involved sending several different messages: to convince LIN shareholders that the better deal was with McCaw; to persuade others in the cellular industry that McCaw was the better steward of LIN's critical licenses; and to build pressure on BellSouth through political means and by convincing them they were in a fight with a ruthless opponent. Normally eager to avoid reporters, McCaw started sending signals through the news media that he wanted LIN at practically any price. McCaw compared his company to anti-imperial Scottish warriors, the Islamic Jihad, and the anti-Soviet Afghan rebels. "We want them to think we're maniacs," he told Forbes magazine. He sent John Stanton, Rufus Lumry, and other McCaw executives on a worldwide trip to raise money from bankers who were privately assured that McCaw would make no crazy offers. The group raised $5.5 billion—proof that Craig McCaw was not dependent on Michael Milken, who was about to have serious trouble with the law. Meanwhile, on Wall Street, the McCaw team tried to raise doubts about BellSouth's offer by pointing out the Material Adverse Change (MAC) clause in the Baby Bell's offer. Routinely used by many compa- nies in buyout offers, the MAC clause allowed the cautious BellSouth an out if problems erupted. The McCaw company had similar outs in its offer, but the team stressed how long Bells usually took to close deals compared to McCaw's history of rapid closures. A slow-as-molasses Baby Bell deal, they implied, stood a good chance of triggering the MAC clause and killing the whole arrangement. Other McCaw aides tried to make political trouble for BellSouth, telling state regulators that the LIN deal would drive up local charges or violate agreements. Two U.S. senators from Washington State agreed to introduce a bill to block BellSouth. Then came McCaw's flanking maneuver, what Perry calls "the beginning of the end" for BellSouth."