Joint AT&T-BellSouth Might Cut 10,000 Jobs

03/06/2006

NEW YORK (AP) - AT&T Inc. (T) plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs, mostly through attrition, if its $67 billion purchase of BellSouth Corp. (BLS) goes through, AT&T’s chief financial officer said Monday.

The work force reduction would take place over three years, AT&T’s Rick Lindner said on a conference call. The acquisition is expected to close next year, pending approval from shareholders and regulators.

Before the cuts, the combined company would have around 317,000 employees, including Cingular Wireless LLC, which is now an AT&T-BellSouth joint venture.

The 10,000 planned cuts are in addition to the 26,000 job cuts AT&T has already announced - 13,000 due to SBC’s acquisition of AT&T Corp., which closed in November, and 13,000 due to “operational initiatives.” The combined SBC-AT&T took the name AT&T Inc.

San Antonio-based AT&T expects the acquisition announced Sunday to save it $2 billion annually at first, increasing to $3 billion a year by 2010.

Slightly more than one third of the savings would come from reduced labor costs and consolidation of support functions and corporate staff, Lindner said. The combined company would be based in San Antonio.

More savings from the proposed acquisition would come from reduced advertising expenses and combining the backbone network and information-technology operations of the companies.

The deal is effectively a merger of three companies that now operate separately, since it gives AT&T total control of Cingular, the nation’s largest cell-phone provider.

“Over the last couple of years as we have operated Cingular and our Yellow Pages venture, it became clear that there was a lot of duplication that could be eliminated,” said Duane Ackerman, chief executive of BellSouth.


“This merger will allow us to move to a single brand for wireline, for wireless, for business and consumer, and that’s AT&T,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chief operating officer. “A single brand is much more cost efficient and far more effective.”

AT&T is paying 1.325 of its own shares for each BellSouth share. Based on Friday’s closing price of $27.99 for AT&T shares, that works out to be $37.09 for each BellSouth share, an 18 percent premium from the Friday closing price of $31.46 for the company.

BellSouth shares surged $3.76, or 12 percent, to $35.22 in midday trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of AT&T slipped 30 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $27.69.

AT&T plans to buy back stock worth at least $10 billion in the next two years, effectively paying for the premium given to BellSouth shareholders in cash, executives said.

The merged company would have 70 million local-line phone customers, 54.1 million wireless subscribers and nearly 10 million broadband subscribers in the 22 states where they now operate.

The deal would substantially expand the reach of AT&T, already the country’s largest telecommunications company by the number of customers served. BellSouth is the dominant local telephone provider in the Southeast.