On a genealogy chart, SBC Communications Inc. would trace its heritage to 1878 when 12 customers signed up for St. Louis’ first telephone exchange. That linking of a dozen individuals went on to become Bell Telephone Co. of Missouri and eventually Southwestern Bell Corp.
After several takeovers and a move to San Antonio–followed by a quickly called-off merger proposal with AT&T Corp. last year–the 120-year-old descendant of the St. Louis connection now ranks as one of America’s biggest phone companies, with service in the nation’s two most populous states, California and Texas, $25 billion in sales and 118,000 employees.
When SBC’s proposed $56.6 billion purchase of Chicago’s Ameritech Corp. is completed, the company would have $41 billion in annual sales, ranking it as the top U.S. local phone provider and the second-largest U.S. phone company–right behind AT&T.
SBC operates under Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell and Cellular One, one of the original cellular telephone providers in Chicago. The acquisition-hungry SBC completed its $16.5 billion purchase of Pacific Telesis Group just last year and expects to wrap up its $5 billion purchase of Southern New England Telecommunications Corp. of Connecticut this year.
SBC has also built an international portfolio, which includes operations in 10 countries on five continents, valued at more than $6 billion.
Little wonder that SBC has a reputation of being fiercely aggressive.
Some analysts see the folks at SBC as conservative Texans who, lacking innovations, maintain cozy relationships with lobbyists and the Texas legislature, then get what they want through gobbling up smaller companies and suing when they’re told to back off.
Yet Fortune ranked SBC as the most admired U.S. telecommunications company in 1996, ’97 and ’98. In a survey conducted by Fortune in 1997, SBC was named the world’s most admired telecommunications company.
The man credited with SBC’s global expansion is Edward E. Whitacre Jr., 56, who has been with the company 33 years and chairman and chief executive since 1990.
Whitacre’s personal heritage is thoroughly Texan. A native of Ennis, Texas, the drawling, personable but private executive who eschews cowboy gear or casual days in favor of serious business clothing, Whitacre graduated from Texas Tech University in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering.
He is the incoming president of the Boy Scouts of America’s national council and has been a member of its southern region executive boards, the Board of Regents of Texas Tech University and the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center.
It’s no secret that one of the chief reasons Whitacre wants Ameritech is for its savvy and inside track in international telecommunications.
SBC’s own market outside the U.S. includes an eclectic mix of far-flung countries: Mexico, Chile, South Korea, France, South Africa, Switzerland, Israel and Taiwan.
