Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at Worldcom

by Lynne W. Jeter

Book Overview

The first inside look into the fall of the telecom industry pioneer Disconnected is the first book to tell the tale of the once powerful telecom pioneer whose corporate scandal eclipses the Enron fiasco. During the summer of 2002, WorldCom, once a leading carrier of Internet traffic, filed the largest bankruptcy claim in American history due to accounting errors totaling over $7 billion-and now finds itself on the brink of corporate extinction. Disconnected...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 047142997X
• ISBN13: 9780471429975
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Disconnected deceit & berayal at WorldCom

Very descriptive, good insight, a must read for any masters level student MBA,HR,Edu, etc...

How Worldcom got where they are

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.

The story is in the people.

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.

Personal Look

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 analysisabout 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.

Outstanding Reporting

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