Tuesday, November 16, 1999
Cincinnati Bell begets BroadWing
Merger with IXC completed
BY MIKE BOYER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati Bell aims to be a bird of a different feather with its new name, BroadWing Inc.
The name, which grew out of suggestions from two employees, is meant to reflect the combination of Cincinnati Bell's local phone service with IXC Communications' 14,000-mile fiber-optic network carrying voice, data and the Internet, said Rick Ellenberger, president and chief executive officer.
Bell completed its $3 billion acquisition of Austin, Texas-based IXC last week. The combined companies have $2 billion in revenues and 5,500 employees and operate 37 offices nationally.
“Today, we're an integrated telecommunications powerhouse taking flight,” Mr. Ellenberger told an employee rally Monday at company headquarters.
Holding a redtail hawk named Ginger, Mr. Ellenberger said the broadwing hawk is a fitting image for the new direction of the combined Cincinnati Bell and IXC. The bird soars to great heights “and stakes out where the prey is going to be when it strikes, not where it is now,” he said.
In a series of full-page ads in The Cincinnati Enquirer, the Wall Street Journal and other publications, the new name was introduced with a closeup of the hawk's claws with the underline: “We've been known to strike so fast you never saw us coming. (And this is just day one.)”
“Customers are telling us that the landscape is littered with broken promises and uninspired thinking,” Mr. Ellenberger said. “BroadWing will be different.”
In the Greater Cincinnati area, where it has more than a million customers, the company will continue to operate as Cincinnati Bell.
BroadWing, which will be based in Cincinnati, will employ about 3,500 here, the same as Cincinnati Bell. It also employs about 2,000 in the Austin area. Richard Pontin, Bell's chief operating officer, has been named president of BroadWing's national markets business, which includes Cincinnati Bell Long Distance, and will be based in Austin.
As part of a management realignment:
• Jack Cassidy, head of Cincinnati Bell Wireless, was named president of Cincinnati Bell Enterprises, which includes the wireless business, Cincinnati Bell Directory and Cincinnati Bell Supply.
• Jack Mueller, formerly president of Bell's residential and business markets, was named president of Cincinnati Bell Telephone.
Moody's, the credit rating agency, said Monday that it was downgrading its opinion of the combined company's debt, including $1.8 billion in new financing with a group of banks led by Citibank.
While acknowledging the potential from combining the two companies, Moody's noted that integrating them and fixing back-office problems that have hampered IXC “will be formidable.”
BroadWing, whose ticker symbol is BRW, closed Monday at $27.50, down 683/4 cents.
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