Forget the dot-con; the biggest bubble in the history of the modern world was the telecom bubble. At its peak in February 2000, Wall Street valued the telecom companies at $2 trillion – that is more money than the entire third world debt and change. Today the entire sector is worth less than a third of that. More than 15 companies have filed for bankruptcy and others are teetering on the edge, while 400,000 employees have lost their jobs along with their retirement nest eggs practically overnight. The telecoms industry is by the 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 the top executives at many of these failed or failing companies have been inversely proportionate to their decline. This book takes you behind the scenes to get the story you don’t get in the media on the players who cashed in on the boom, the pundits who built and lost their reputations, and the entrepreneurs who are now struggling to find meaning to their lives. Broadbandits is the story of this new gold rush. It is an insiders’ 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. The book introduces a colorful cast of characters-from the son of a former Brooklyn bartender to the scion of a blueblood Yankee family-and tells how they got swept up in the mania. It gives the inside story of how many telecom upstarts and veterans alike became victims of what one chief executive calls “high yield heroin”.
Book Details:
- Author: Om P. Malik
- ISBN: 9780470232507
- Year Published: 2003
- Pages: 334
- BISAC: BUS000000, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/General
About the Book and Topic:
Forget the dot-con; the biggest bubble in the history of the modern world was the telecom bubble. At its peak in February 2000, Wall Street valued the telecom companies at $2 trillion – that is more money than the entire third world debt and change. Today the entire sector is worth less than a third of that. More than 15 companies have filed for bankruptcy and others are teetering on the edge, while 400,000 employees have lost their jobs along with their retirement nest eggs practically overnight. The telecoms industry is by the 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 the top executives at many of these failed or failing companies have been inversely proportionate to their decline. This book takes you behind the scenes to get the story you don’t get in the media on the players who cashed in on the boom, the pundits who built and lost their reputations, and the entrepreneurs who are now struggling to find meaning to their lives. Broadbandits is the story of this new gold rush. It is an insiders’ 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. The book introduces a colorful cast of characters-from the son of a former Brooklyn bartender to the scion of a blueblood Yankee family-and tells how they got swept up in the mania. It gives the inside story of how many telecom upstarts and veterans alike became victims of what one chief executive calls “high yield heroin”.
The biggest casualty of infectious greed, the telecom industry — once the foundation of the Dow and Nasdaq — has eaten up more capital than any other industry in recent history and has nothing to show for it. $750 billion down the tubes, yet for a while these companies stocks and valuations were flying high. 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.
* FROM THE MAGAZINE THE PREDICTED THE TECH BUBBLE: Red Herring has been scrutinizing the power players in high tech for years now and was among the first to question how tech companies were being valued. Broadbandits follows in these footsteps and is sure to be the definitive book on the financial shenanigans and misguided power plays that brought down telecom. * COMPELLING TELL-ALL: Broadbandits is sure to be one of the most compelling accounts of the downfall of the telecom giants from an insider who has a track record of following the money. Om Malik is an investigative journalist with the ability to spin a fascinating tale of intrigue and greed.
About the Author
OM MALIK is a Senior Writer for Business 2.0 in San Francisco, California. Prior to joining Business 2.0, he worked for Red Herring and Forbes Online, where he was a senior editor. An award-winning journalist, his work has also been published in newspapers and magazines such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Brandweek, and Crain’s New York Business. For a brief while, he was a venture capitalist.