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Fairpoint Phone Co bankrupt [Telecom]

A phone company serving New England has filed for bankruptcy. The filing was anticipated. Apparently many knew from the start their business plan was flawed.

see:

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They are asking for concessions from employees and creditors. IMHO, unless the employees are getting grossly generous compensation, it seems that it's not fair to hit them. The investors were the ones who chose to go with a flawed plan; they should bear the losses.

In any event, it is always unfortunate when a large company goes bankrupt. IMHO the business community, consumers, and investors all ought to learn from such mistakes.

(Background information and comments appreciated.)

[public replies, please]
Reply to
hancock4
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OK, I, as a Fairpoint shareholder, have been snookered twice by Verizon. My Fairpoint shares were a direct result of Verizon's deal to sell them the New England properties. Similar deal with Idearc. Seems to me that the Verizon folks are pretty good at getting the most for their troubled assests and leaving their shareholders holding the bag....

Could it be that Verizon management knows what they are doing???

In any event, such is life.

ET

PS - I was "retired" due to the mess with the breakup of Lucent/Western Electric. Maybe someday I'll learn that phones aren't the way to go...

Reply to
Eric Tappert

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Lets hope the FCC will not allow the next round of sales. I'm retired GTE and my GTE stock was converted to Verizon and has been diluted so much. Each time I'm given other stock I converted it back to Verizon. GTE so much cash and very little debit, its retirement was so well funded that no funding was needed for over 10 years. The funds are not under Verizons control so they are safe from plundering from Verizon.

Reply to
Steven

Interesting point.

In the case of Idearc, small shareholders could sell their shares back to the company. Presumably large shareholders could sell them on the market.

I don't know if shareholders had a choice on whether to take the sellouts.

Actually, I'm confused. Idearc was a new company created as a spinoff by Verizon. (Still unclear why they went bellyup). Didn't Fairpoint already exist?

Reply to
hancock4

Idearc was a brand new company invented by Verizon to take over the yellow pages business, which was being killed by the internet. Fairpoint was a small independent phone company that purchased Verizon's rural New England facilities in a stock deal. The size of Fairpoint increased tremendously and they had severe problems transferring the records from Verizon's computer system to theirs. The subsequent muddle cost them dearly in both customers and money. Then the financial mess hit...

In any event, Verizon dumped businesses that were on the way out in both cases.

ET

Reply to
Eric Tappert

The did already exist, but were not ready to handle a large expansion with major updates under way.

Reply to
Steven

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