"some analysts have made a persuasive case that the AT&T chief executive, John Stankey — who spearheaded the 2018 deal, as well as AT&T’s disastrous acquisition of DirecTV three years before that — is the worst media strategist in recent memory."
Bo-m.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/opinion/att-discover-merger.html
Stop quoting newspapers you said you detested over the past 4 years! And, yet, here you are fawning over a piece written by, what did you call them, ‘the progressive, elite, ‘liberal’ media’. The New York Times is a premier MSM newspaper with award winning journalists. Go wait for Faux News to spin some yarn for you. You’re way out of your lane quoting a reputable newspaper. You can’t have it both ways, dudes.
Winning as One!
Stephenson and Stankey would not even be qualified to work as a first level manager at any other company. They have destroyed a once great company. Employees were once proud and grateful to work at AT&T, not so much anymore. It's a shame that good employees trying to find work elsewhere will be forced to show T as a prior employer on their resume.
But remember, no one believes the NYT piece, that’s a mainstream newspaper, right? LOL can you spell hypocrite.
"Stankey was on Wall Street Week, and pointed out...."
Why - WHY - would anyone out any value in what Stankey says about any of this? He's lied about basically everything from the start. OF COURSE he's going to put a positive spin on this.
Also, this deal WASN'T EVEN HIS IDEA - the Discovery guy came up with this and brought it to Stankey. The more I learn about the deal, the less I understand. Stankey gets a call on a Sunday afternoon and is convinced to just abandon the "strategy" he's pursued for the last three years?
What's next? Billions of dollars invested in Pog NFTs?
Sad thing is he is not a good telecom manager either. All this nonsense about getting back into fiber should have been done when they spent the money on DirecTV which had no synergy with our networks. They completely misread markets and forgot about differences between DirecTV network and AT&T's, Hence all the ramifications. Then they outsourced great customer service. They outsourced network functions. They outsourced IT. He needs to go. Put McFresh in charge and retire Stankey already. He and Randall were a package deal. A package of used and stale garbage.
What is missing in Stinkey's number is that you don't count what shareholders get as a benefit to T. He can try to spin it however he wants but T is only seeing that they paid $85 billion and sold in the $40s.
He didn't do that same wacky math when they paid out the $85 billion saying shareholders LOST $85B.
It’s funny, I remember we were being told to move faster, take risk and fail fast. My circle of network engineers looked at other, what the f$&@ are these executives talking about?
Billions, years, and now they are claiming spin offs are the right strategy. We are going buy these companies back in 3 years, I’m calling it now.
What is missing is the numbers. Stankey was on Wall Street Week, and pointed out that in addition to the $43B in cash, shareholders get a 71% stake in the new media company. Some price that at $60B. So, $85B paid versus $43B+60B? That $60B could be $42B and we're at breakeven.
I'm not convinced that Warner was a bad deal. I am convinced that DirectTV was.