A Battered Brand, Reborn

摘要

Dward E. whitacre Jr. has a soft spot for the beaten-down brand that is AT&T. He joined the 130-year-old company as an engineer in 1963 and left it two decades later to stay with Southwestern Bell, one of seven Bell local-service companies that the feds broke off from AT&T in 1984. He became the Baby Bell's chief in 1990, renamed it SBC in 1995—and has spent upward of $200 billion of shareholders' money to reassemble much of the AT&T he had left behind.