Product Description

Investigating the financial fraud and misguided power plays that brought down the telecom industry

Once the foundation of the Dow and NASDAQ, the telecom industry has eaten up more capital than any other industry in recent history and has nothing to show for it. Today, it is by far the worst culprit in the spate of financial dirty dealings that have been splashed across the business pages, and yet the rewards reaped by top executives at many of these failed or failing companies have been inversely proportionate to their decline. Broadbandits takes readers behind the scenes to get the story they won't get in the media. Investigative reporter Om Malik follows the money trail and deciphers the actions and motivations of a generation of new economy "barbarians" that brought down this once lucrative industry. This intriguing book offers an inside look into the telecom bubble, with tales and anecdotes about mavericks who turned simple light and glass fibers into veins of gold, financiers who got greedy and fleeced unsuspecting millions, clueless venture capitalists who thought they'd tapped into the mother lode, hapless entrepreneurs who believed that they were changing the world, and self-proclaimed pundits who were cheering it all on from the sidelines. Broadbandits is a compelling account of the downfall of telecom giants such as WorldCom and Global Crossing, and will show readers how many telecom upstarts and veterans alike became victims of what one chief executive aptly described as "high-yield heroin."

Om Malik (New York, NY) is a Senior Writer for Red Herring who focuses on the telecommunications sector. Prior to joining Red Herring in July 2000, he was senior editor at Forbes.com. His work has also been published in newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, Brandweek, and Crain's New York Business. For a very brief while, he was a venture capitalist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1093588 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-25
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .95" h x 5.72" w x 8.80" l, .88 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 334 pages

From Booklist
Even as the conspicuous dot-com bubble burst in March 2000, an even larger bubble was still forming that would bring disaster to the telecommunications industry. The race to develop broadband fiber optic networks is a story of overcapacity and overproduction with an all-too-familiar theme of greed and deceit that has left companies in shambles, employees without jobs, and investors swindled while executives cashed out with millions. Malik, a former senior writer for Red Herring and Forbes.com, reports on more than a dozen of these "broadbandits," such as Gary Winnick, cofounder of Global Crossing, who became a billionaire faster than anyone in U.S. history; Jack Grubman, telecom analyst at Solomon Smith Barney, who pocketed $100 million touting overpriced broadband stocks; and Bernie Ebbers, chief executive of Worldcom, who went on an acquisition buying spree until the company's financial dirty tricks caught up with him. Losses in this sector have approached a trillion dollars, reputations have been ruined, and the economy is suffering as a result, but disaster does make for interesting copy. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Info
Text covers the telecommunications industry since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and shows how a few men and a few dozen companies all but destroyed an industry and decimated thousands of portfolios in the process.

From the Back Cover
Praise for Broadbandits

"Broadbandits weaves together a story of greed, money, power, and crime to reveal to the millions of people who lost their investments in telecom stock where, and to whom, their hard-earned dollars went."
—Charles Dubow, Executive Editor, Forbes.com

"Om Malik has the courage to write that instead of reporting EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), the CEOs he calls broadbandits reported their own style of EBITDA (Earnings Before Irregularities, Tampering, and Dubious Accounting). His pen is as wicked as Mark Twain's."
—Blaise Zerega, Managing Editor, Wired magazine

"Rare for a book in its field, Broadbandits is an attractive, stodge-free read. Accessible, even mischievous, it should prove instructive not merely to geeks, (disgruntled) venture capitalists, and bankrupt telecom tycoons, but also to that species most neglected of all—the lay reader."
—Tunku Varadarajan, Editorial Features Editor, The Wall Street Journal

"Broadbandits is a fast-paced tale of the key players responsible for inflating the telecom bubble. Many were fools, many others rogues, some managed to escape with riches, some were ruined. With an unforgettable cast, Broadbandits is a sobering account of monumental financial waste and the derailment of hundreds of thousands of lives."
—Andrew Odlyzko, Director, Digital Technology Center and Assistant Vice President for Research, University of Minnesota