Industry in brief: AT&T, Virgin

Just a couple of quick hits to round out this marvelous week. First, AT&T lost their president and chief executive of their wireless division. Stan Sigman announced his retirement yesterday. It’s not known what effect this will have on the company, though Sigman is staying on to help his replacement, Ralph de la Vega, transition into the position. Sigman’s experience was invaluable, though. He started in the industry in 1965 with Southwestern Bell and helped it grow into a juggernaut. We’ll see if Mr. de la Vega helps make the wireless division less evil.

And then we have Virgin Mobile, who launched their IPO. It opened at the low end of forecasts, selling 27.5 million shares at $15 each. Hey, at least they didn’t fall below expectations.

One analyst actually gave it a “sell” rating. Uh, how, praytell? What, is someone going to buy it and then just sell it because you say so? Geeeeeze. What does a company have to do to avoid the perilous “sell” tag?

Related Posts

Leave a Reply