The SBC-BellSouth Marriage that Never Was

Interesting article in USA Today yesterday on BellSouth and its reluctance to jump into the M&A game as aggressively as SBC and others have. The article recounts how, after the wireless company Cingular acquired AT&T’s wireless business, SBC CEO Ed Whitacre proposed an SBC-BellSouth merger. BellSouth CEO Duane Ackerman passed, but offered a plan of his own. He wanted to merge the assets of the two companies into three separate, public companies for wireline, wireless and Yellow Pages. Whitacre instead went after the acquisition of AT&T and the rest is history. Here is the article.