Yesterday was, of course, the day before Thanksgiving, which is notorious for being a day when companies release things they’d actually rather not talk about much. It was no different this year in telecom and data, let’s look at the news and try not to cringe.
Qwest may have finally settled its shareholder lawsuit from the bubble days. Late Wednesday they announced that a $445M deal was approved by a federal judge in Denver. They thought they settled this a few times already, but appeals from former CEO Joseph Nacchio kept it up in the air. Everyone seems to be happy now, but I don’t blame Qwest for hoping this one generates little press. They must be really tired of the whole thing by now.
In an SEC filing, Limelight (LLNW) and its CEO have renegotiated his compensation package, a phenomenon that often seems magnetically attracted to holiday weekends. It appears that he agreed to let some out of the money options be canceled, and was rewarded with about 500k restricted shares worth about $1.3M at today’s price that vest over the next few years depending on financial performance of the company. Quite a payday, even if it is tied to performance. I wonder what the metrics are…
And last but not least, Level 3 Communications’ (LVLT) Business Markets division has a new leader. Jeff Tench has taken over leadership of the group. I’ve watched him on a few LightReading video interviews and I liked what I saw, he seems to be an up and coming executive at the company. But of course, this move comes because the former head of the division, Raouf Abdel, has left. And I don’t think it’s any surprise why, the division has struggled for a long time. Integration or no integration, it just wasn’t working. Good luck to Jeff, it’s a tough time to take the reins anywhere these days.
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“It just wasn’t working” is quite an understatement compared to the mis-representations Abdel and O’Hara made at the beginning of 2007, before he was aggressively selling stock in May of the same year.
Don’t forget these two were talking about the ease of growing from one percent to two percent market share while using a false 100B addressable market number which Jim Crowe changed to 30B after wards.
They were very courteous of Abdel during this dismissal notice, much like paying off O’Hara a seven digit consulting package still sucking important, necessary cash flow away from our balance sheet. 🙁
Good riddance to Abdel, and may he experience a famine in some sandy desert across the globe after the way he lied and duped shareholders surrounding market conditions which didn’t exist when he warranted them along with his former boss.
Carlk, that seems a bit harsh on thanksgiving!
Ah well, I have nothing against Abdel, I hope he lands softly if he hasn’t already. But it has been almost two years now since Broadwing closed, and the BM quarterly revenue progression for the last six quarters has been 235, 235, 239, 240, 240, 241.