Playing every angle
IDT, a formerly little telecom start-up that began with a car and selling brochure placements in motel lobbies, is bidding $255 million for Global Crossing. This after selling Net2Phone to AT&T for $1.1 billion in 2001.
The offer is about 35 percent lower than the offer by Hutchison Whampoa made for a controlling interest in Global Crossing. The argument for the low-ball offer: Don't let an Asian company get its mitts on the U.S. data network operated by Global Crossing, in a blatant playing of the jingoism card:
"Would we give the keys to the Justice Department buildings or the board rooms of some of our largest corporations to a foreign government so they could listen in? Absolutely not. The idea is absurd. Yet a foreign telecommunications company based in communist controlled China, is asking our government for control of Global Crossing..."
Okay, how about we recognize that we live in a global economy and live with that fact instead of raising the spectre of godless communism when describing a company that has been aggressively capitalistic throughout its history, most of which took place in Hong Kong before the British turned the city-state over to the PRC?
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at February 25, 2003 08:06 PM | TrackBack