Fairpoint Phone Co bankrupt [Telecom]

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...

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.

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?

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

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