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A company headed by the niece of Gov. Haley Barbour has won bidding for a country club once owned by imprisoned ex-WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers. The company, Alcatec, is owned by Rosemary Ramirez Barbour, who is married to Hinds County Supervisor Charles Barbour, the governor’s nephew. Rosemary Barbour said Thursday that her company bid $810,000 for the Brookhaven Country Club. “I think it’s great for the community,” she said. The country club formerly owned by Ebbers includes almost 130 acres with an 18-hole golf course, eight tennis courts, a swimming pool, a clubhouse, maintenance sheds and a home. Rosemary Barbour...

NEW YORK - Bonuses at Wall Street firms climbed to a projected record of $21.5 billion last year as revenue grew, according to the New York state comptroller's office. Comptroller Alan Hevesi said Wednesday that 2005's bonus tally was $2 billion more than the old record, which was set in 2000. In 2004, Wall Street bonuses came to an estimated $18.6 billion. Last year's average bonus was pegged at $125,500, also a record, Hevesi said. Revenue at Wall Street firms rose 44.5 percent through the first three quarters of 2005, climbing to the highest level since 2000, the year when...

Former Worldcom Chief Executive Bernard Ebbers was handed a 25-year prison term for directing the biggest accounting fraud in corporate history, leaving thousands of investors empty-handed. Ebbers, who built a small Mississippi-based long distance company into a telecommunications powerhouse, was found guilty on March 15 on all charges — one count of conspiracy, one count of securities fraud and seven counts of false regulatory filings. But he could also be a charming and folksy CEO, who preferred cowboy boots to suits, opened shareholder meetings with a prayer, ate lunch in the cafeteria and ran a company that had become a...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Former WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers will pay $5 million and transfer nearly all his assets into a liquidation trust to settle civil charges related to the company's accounting fraud, the government said Thursday. Federal prosecutors said the trust, which would sell off Ebbers' assets, would be worth up to $40 million. As a result, prosecutors said they would not seek restitution when Ebbers is sentenced July 13. The settlement springs from a class-action suit brought by investors against former WorldCom executives and board members, plus investment banks that underwrote WorldCom securities and auditing firm Arthur Andersen....

Jury Finds Ex-WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers Guilty on All Counts in Connection With Massive Fraud NEW YORK (AP) -- Bernard Ebbers, the once-swaggering CEO of WorldCom, was convicted Tuesday of engineering the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history -- an $11 billion accounting scandal that capsized the big telecom company three years ago. The verdict marked a colossal fall for Ebbers, who had turned a humble Mississippi long-distance provider into a global telecommunications power, swallowing up companies along the way and earning the nickname "Telecom Cowboy." A federal jury in Manhattan returned guilty verdicts on all nine counts, including securities...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Bernard Ebbers, the former CEO of WorldCom, was found guilty Tuesday for his role in the mammoth accounting scandal that brought the company down two and half years ago. A federal jury in New York, on its eighth day of deliberations, convicted Ebbers on all nine counts that he helped mastermind a $11 billion accounting fraud at WorldCom, now known as MCI.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR TODAY marks the fifth anniversary of the peak of the great millennial stock market. What were you doing when the lights began to dim? Were you a bull or a bear? Rich or otherwise? What about today? Are you inoculated against the new alleged sure things? Or perhaps you believe in the permanent hegemony of the dollar in the world's currency markets? In the inevitability of rising house prices? Or of falling interest rates? Answer true or false: the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is clairvoyant. From the March 2000 top to the October 2002 trough, the...

The fighting entrepreneurial spirit was a hallmark of the man who helped found MCI -- William G. McGowan. McGowan, a financier who was brought in to save the nearly bankrupt MCI Communications Corp., in 1968 was a scrappy fighter determined to take on the giant AT&T, which at that time had monopoly control over all telephone service in the United States. Early in his bid to offer long-distance service, McGowan concluded that the company needed to be in Washington, where it could monitor its battles in the courts and Congress and before the Federal Communications Commission. Until then, the only...

Bob Dole Slams Kerry By Andrew L. Jaffee, August 23, 2004 Home   Search   Forum   Terms Nothing has really changed for Democratic hopeful John Kerry, except that real war veterans, like Bob Dole, are questioning the “superficial wounds” and resulting “medals” he received during four (4) months service in Vietnam. Kerry is still flailing, trying to cover up a career punctuated by extreme left-wing politics and flip-flopping by talking to voters about his military service. He squandered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention by trying to convince Americans that his tour of duty in Vietnam will make him a great commander...

Ken Lay of Enron Indicted and Arrested By Andrew L. Jaffee, July 8, 2004 Home   Search   Forum   Terms Enron’s ex-Chairman of the Board has been indicted and arrested on charges connected with his former company’s implosion in 2001. Corporate executives at Enron engaged in all sorts of financial manipulations to pump up the company’s stock price. They created complex “partnerships” to hide company debt from shareholders. In 1998, Enron’s share price was at about $20. By 2000, it hit $90. By 2001, the company’s stock was worthless. Enron’s collapse wiped out billions in shareholder value and employee pensions. Democratic Presidential hopeful John...

McLEAN, Va. - Bankrupt telecommunications company MCI said Friday it is cutting 4,000 jobs — more than 7 percent of its work force — and closing three call centers because of cost-cutting pressures and fallout from the national Do Not Call registry. The company had announced in January that it was expecting to reduce overall costs by 15 percent to 20 percent, but did not mention specifically that jobs would be cut. The centers being closed are located in Denver, Phoenix and Niles, Ohio. Jobs are also being reduced at MCI facilities in Alpharetta, Ga., Colorado Springs, Colo. and Springfield,...

OKLAHOMA CITY - The Oklahoma attorney general Wednesday filed the first criminal charges against former WorldCom Inc. chief Bernard Ebbers, part of a wider complaint that also named the telecommunications company now known as MCI and other one-time top executives. The complaint accuses Ebbers, the other executives and the company of violating state securities laws by giving false information to investors in 2000. WorldCom collapsed into the nation's largest bankruptcy last year amid an accounting scandal that has grown to $11 billion. "It is rare that we name a company in a criminal complaint, but in this case it is...

WorldCom -- soon to be MCI -- received its blueprint for emerging from Chapter 11 today, and, boy, is it a doozy. The plan from court-appointed corporate monitor Richard Breeden contains no less than 78 "recommendations" designed to keep the company from repeating the past abuses under Bernie Ebbers that led to the most massive accounting fraud in history. Here are the highlights: A separation of the chairman and CEO positions. No stock option grants for at least five years; any thereafter must be expensed. Dividends initially targeted at 25% of net income. At least one new director to be...

<p>McLEAN, Va. — The former top executives at WorldCom Inc. ruled with unquestioned authority, steering the telecommunications company into multibillion-dollar acquisitions on a whim and intimidating underlings who questioned their conduct, according to two reports released today.</p> <p>A report by former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh outlined a corporate culture thoroughly dominated by former chairman Bernard Ebbers and ex-chief financial officer Scott Sullivan, fostering an environment that led to the largest U.S. bankruptcy and an $11 billion accounting scandal.</p>

NEW YORK -- Top management at WorldCom Inc. , including former Chief Executive Bernard J. Ebbers, and dozens of employees conspired together beginning in the late 1990s to carry out massive and systematic fraud at the company, according to the findings of two long-awaited external investigations released Monday. The reports describe how members of WorldCom's management worked to falsify nearly every financial result reported by the company, in an increasingly desperate bid to keep its sagging fortunes concealed from investors. The reports criticize not only top management, but also fault an utter breakdown in the cornerstone of the company's corporate-governance...

A long-awaited report on the accounting fraud at WorldCom Inc. -- the largest in U.S. history -- will conclude for the first time that former Chief Executive Bernard J. Ebbers played a role in the company's effort to improperly boost revenue to meet Wall Street expectations, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. The expansive report, due to be released Monday, is the product of an independent investigation commissioned by the company and led by William McLucas of the law firm of Wilmer Cutler & Pickering. It details how, starting in 1999, the company used accounting...

Bernie Ebbers built a personal empire the way he built WorldCom: with bold deals, big gambles and costly mistakes. Over 20 years, while Ebbers turned WorldCom into the USA's No. 2 long-distance phone company, he also made a string of personal investments that engaged his passions. He bought Canada's biggest ranch and stakes in two farms, a minor league hockey team, a trucking company, an all-terrain-vehicle dealership, a lumberyard, enough acres of timberland to cover half the state of Rhode Island and a yacht company. He also expanded his original hotel chain. Ebbers viewed his outside ventures with pride. With...

<p>July 23, 2002 -- Bernie Ebbers could walk away from the WorldCom mess with $500 million in his pockets - if Uncle Sam doesn't throw him in jail and take it all. The flamboyant founder of the long-distance conglomerate managed to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars from the company in bonuses and options in recent years before it tanked from its cooked books scandal.</p>

<p>The telecommunications industry truly ought to be made into a soap opera. Maybe we could call it General Telecom. No? How about As the WorldCom Turns?</p> <p>The Young and the Bankrupt?</p> <p>Monday, super investor Warren Buffett ( news - web sites) jolted the nearly prostrate telecom industry by leading an investment of $500 million in Level 3 Communications. Telecom companies now are so reviled, and Buffett is so worshiped, the investment is like the prom queen deciding to dance with the greasy kid who broke both legs of the star quarterback by accidentally running him over in the school parking lot before the first game.</p>