AT&T NAMES NEW FINANCIAL OFFICER : CANADIAN JOINS TELECOMMUNICATION GIANT'S REVITALIZATION TEAM.Byline: David E. Kalish Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. AT&T Corp. on Wednesday named senior Bell Canada Bell Canada Enterprises (TSX: BCE, NYSE: BCE), legally BCE Inc., is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Through its subsidiaries including Bell Canada, Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for executive Daniel Somers as its next chief financial officer, the telecommunications company's biggest outside hire since John R. Walter became president last fall. Somers, 49, replaces Richard W. Miller
Richard W. Miller is a political philosopher and professor at Cornell. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard with a dissertation directed by John Rawls. , 56, who quit last month after four years with the company amid several other high-level departures in the wake of Walter's rise to power. Walter, the future replacement to Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Allen Robert Allen may refer to:
A former Wall Street investment banker Investment Banker A person representing a financial institution that is in the business of raising capital for corporations and municipalities. Notes: An investment banker may not accept deposits or make commercial loans. , Somers' challenge is to help assuage as·suage tr.v. as·suaged, as·suag·ing, as·suag·es 1. To make (something burdensome or painful) less intense or severe: assuage her grief. See Synonyms at relieve. 2. concerns of financial analysts and investors as AT&T tries to revitalize its core long-distance business and expand into local service and other ventures. Another focus is to attract capital to AT&T ventures as it competes for overseas customers, an area where the company has been hit hard. Telecommunications companies like AT&T are pushing aggressively into Latin America Latin America, the Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and French-speaking countries (except Canada) of North America, South America, Central America, and the West Indies. and other markets where phone service is spotty. But two weeks ago, Spanish company Telefonica allied itself with British Telecom and MCI (1) (Media Control Interface) A high-level programming interface from Microsoft and IBM for controlling multimedia devices. It provides commands and functions to open, play and close the device. (2) (Microwave Communications Inc. to expand in Latin America in a setback to AT&T, which had been considered a likely partner for Telefonica in that region. Helping Somers in his task are eight years of experience as a Wall Street investment banker and financial analyst. ``I have a very good relationship with the street,'' Somers said in a telephone interview from London. The timing between jobs was close for Somers. His two-year job as chairman and chief executive of Bell Cablemedia PLC, Bell Canada's British unit, was about to be extinguished after a deal he helped arrange to merge his business with other British cable interests to create London's largest cable provider, Cable & Wireless Communications. The venture went public Monday. Somers, who is a citizen of Canada, said he ``had every intention'' of returning there to parent Bell Canada until he was approached by AT&T about three months ago. ``What enticed me to go with AT&T was AT&T,'' he said, adding that the challenges the company faces are ``opportunities one doesn't pass up in my career.'' CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: Daniel Somers Has strong ties to Wall Street |
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