Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist

Author - Om Malik ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Wiley was reviewed on 16-Oct-2008.

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1) Paperback Book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist by Wiley. Om Malik provides an interesting view of the second bubble of the new century, although the book isn´t a tremendous read. For anybody interested in the origins and ramifications of the broadband bubble it is definitely worth reading, but don´t expect the book to be anything as compelling as Barbarians at the Gate, Conspiracy of Fools or Serpent on the Rock.¤

2) Paperback Book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist by Wiley. Three threads run throughout the telecom bust - 1)an insanely overoptimistic forecast that demand would double every 100 days (actually every year), 2)Jack Grubman´s shameless stock shilling for telecom companies and Solomon, and 3)attempting to build stock value through numerous acquisitions. In addition, some CEOs, finding themselves unable to maintain earnings growth resorted to blatantly illegal accounting - eg. booking revenue from capacity swaps that accomplished nothing and involved no money transfers (Enron, Global Crossing, Qwest), capitalizing expenses (WorldCom), and booking multi-year contract revenues entirely in the first year (Qwest). Another major problem was overoptimistic forecasts of capacity available through new technology (Teligent).¤

3) Paperback Book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist by Wiley. If you´ve even glanced at your retirement account balance or brokerage statement in the past few years, you no doubt have felt the effects of the broadband bubble. Less publicized than the tech wreck of 2000, the broadband meltdown was every bit as costly. Journalist Om Malik gathers the varied tales of telecom shenanigans anddf then adds up the stock sales so you can see just how much the broadbandits took. Malik´s engaging and vitriolic writing style is fun to read, and he makes the intriguing assertion that the telecoms outdid the dot-coms in terms of sheer greed and gall. We suggest this book to any investor who hopes not to get burned, and to any executive responsible for safeguarding shareholder value.¤

4) Paperback Book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist by Wiley. It was the best of times (money flowed like water), it was the worst of times (in retrospect, for those who didn´t cash out at or near the top). It was a great human drama, and unlike Dickens, it was all 100% nonfiction - it really did happen. For anyone in the telecom industry who lived through the bubble, and now the depression, for anyone who invested in the telecom bubble, or for anyone curious about one of the greatest financial manias in human history, I recommend Broadbandits.

Broadbandits profiles most of the key individuals and companies who helped inflate (and in many cases profit from) the telecom bubble, at a steady one company per chapter pace. Being in the telecom industry myself (still), I can state that Malik accurately captured the major stories I already knew, so I assume the rest of the book is generally factual. Although Malik focuses most of his anger on company bigwigs, he also admits that a bubble the size of this one could not have been created without active, willing participation from all sectors of the community: greedy disconnected CEOs, conflicted Wall Street and industry analysts, small investors who wanted to double their money overnight, and a unique confluence of regulatory and technological changes and advances.

Broadbandits could have been better. Malik´s principle sources are business press articles, and he has a fascination with documenting dollar figures, so he doesn´t probe as deeply as he could into the reasons behind the actions he reports. The book was written hurriedly (to keep it topical), and there are more than a few data errors. Malik correctly cites Ravi Suria´s seminal report on the debt and finances of telecom firms, which proved how the emperor of telecom stocks had no clothes (I remember almost crying for joy when I originally read Suria´s report), but he missed Jeremy Siegel´s equally important bubble bursting op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal proving that Cisco and other high P/E stocks were way overvalued and that we were experiencing another "Nifty Fifty" tech mania episode. Finally, to return to my Dickens reference, the book would be even more dramatic if it recounted more anecdotal stories and statistics of the small investors and employees who lost their money, retirement savings and jobs, to provide contrast to the well-documented stories of folks who cleared many millions during the boom. However, I do admit that with the title of Broadbandits, the focus is on the bigwigs who inflated and profited from the bubble.

One more minor quibble: two of the people who praise Broadbandits on the back cover are thanked by Malik in his Acknowledgements. Conflicts of interest are everywhere! And just what did Malik do during his brief stint as a venture capitalist?¤

5) Paperback Book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist by Wiley. I enjoyed the book very much. Chapter by chapter Om Malik gives the reader story by story of leading companies during the late 90´s early 2000´s and how they were brought down. Thought painful, as I along with many lost money during this period it brings home many basic investment thesis and bubble philosophies and makes for great read.¤

6) Paperback Book Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist by Wiley. Investigating the financial fraud and misguided power plays that brought down the telecom industry

Once the foundation of the Dow and NASDAQ, the telecom industry has eaten up more capital than any other industry in recent history and has nothing to show for it. Today, it is by far the worst culprit in the spate of financial dirty dealings that have been splashed across the business pages, and yet the rewards reaped by top executives at many of these failed or failing companies have been inversely proportionate to their decline. Broadbandits takes readers behind the scenes to get the story they won´t get in the media. Investigative reporter Om Malik follows the money trail and deciphers the actions and motivations of a generation of new economy "barbarians" that brought down this once lucrative industry. This intriguing book offers an inside look into the telecom bubble, with tales and anecdotes about mavericks who turned simple light and glass fibers into veins of gold, financiers who got greedy and fleeced unsuspecting millions, clueless venture capitalists who thought they´d tapped into the mother lode, hapless entrepreneurs who believed that they were changing the world, and self-proclaimed pundits who were cheering it all on from the sidelines. Broadbandits is a compelling account of the downfall of telecom giants such as WorldCom and Global Crossing, and will show readers how many telecom upstarts and veterans alike became victims of what one chief executive aptly described as "high-yield heroin."

Om Malik (New York, NY) is a Senior Writer for Red Herring who focuses on the telecommunications sector. Prior to joining Red Herring in July 2000, he was senior editor at Forbes.com. His work has also been published in newspapers and magazines such as The Wall Street Journal, Business 2.0, Brandweek, and Crain´s New York Business. For a very brief while, he was a venture capitalist.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 13-Nov-2008, 04716606129780471660613, 960-700-120-570-920-350-080-8

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