Via his company Canef SA, Altice founder Patrick Drahi secretly bought this sprawling estate in Cologny, near Geneva, Switzerland. (Image: Capital.fr)

Despite slashing jobs, ruthless cost cutting that degrades network quality for subscribers, and stiffing vendors, Patrick Drahi and his associates have spared no expense building a fabulous collection of Swiss real estate for themselves. If you plan to invest in property holding companies, an LLC will protect your other assets should something happen to one of your properties. And if you’re looking for a property on Koh Samui, consider finding a reliable company to help you navigate the best villas on Koh Samui for sale.

Drahi, the founder and president of Altice, the European cable and wireless conglomerate that today owns Suddenlink and some day soon may own Cablevision, has taken great lengths to hide his extravagant spending. He prefers to depict his carefully cultivated public image of frugality, seen publicly riding a bicycle to the office, eschewing secretaries and business cards, and claiming to be an expert at running a good business for less money.

But as French magazine Capital reveals, like many of Altice’s products and services, the marketing doesn’t match the reality.

Soon after Drahi signs acquisition papers for his latest deal, promising upgrades and enhancements to the public and regulators while telling investors he’s ready to cut to the bone, it becomes clear his promises to Wall Street and investors are the only ones that matter:

• Soon after acquiring French daily Libération, one-third of the workforce found themselves out of a job;
• Within the Express-Expansion Group, of the 700 employees he inherited after acquiring the media group, 115 were gone after the deal was signed and Altice is preparing to jettison another 90 positions in the near future;
• At one of his biggest acquisitions — Numéricable and SFR, despite a commitment not to layoff workers until 2017, unions estimate 700 positions vacated by employees have remained unfilled;
• In Portugal, trade unions last month accused Altice of continuing to slash employee benefits, ending free subscriptions to PT’s Meo broadband, phone and television service for employees, reducing meal allowances and restricting the use of company vehicles (except by executives).

In 2000, during the “lean years,” Drahi managed to acquire this modest piece of property for a bit over $7 million. It’s one of his least valuable homes, and has since been put under his wife’s name and is undergoing extensive renovation. (Image: Capital.fr)

While employees watch company bean counters demand cutbacks that occasionally leave offices without basic office supplies, Drahi’s endless acquisition deals come with numbers that make your head spin:

• At least $50 million dollars a month is paid to bankers to cover interest on Altice’s massive debts, which now range near €10 billion.
• Altice’s finances seem so risky to many bankers, they charge Drahi 5-10% interest.

Altice’s endless promises of improved service through upgrades and better customer relations are little more than expensive fibs to their customers in France, who have endured rate increases and appallingly bad service.

In fact, UFC Que Choisir, France’s Federal Union of Consumers, reported last month Altice’s management of its mobile operator SFR has turned the company into the worst rated and most hated mobile operator in France.

The group reports “unprecedented levels of discontent” from consumers calling their legal information service for help taking SFR to court over its poor service and billing practices. Of all the legal disputes filed in 2015 against telecom companies, an amazing 44% targeted Drahi’s SFR Numéricable, which has only a 20% share of France’s mobile market.

Despite assurances of better service during 2015, customers continued to leave. In mid-2015 alone, 445,000 mobile customers permanently hung up on SFR Numéricable and switched to other providers.

Drahi doesn’t just alienate his customers. His competitors, notably Orange and Free have complained SFR engages in a pattern of misleading or outright false advertising. Two months after those complaints were lodged, officials from the Competition Authority raided the headquarters of SFR Numéricable and seized documents.

Any provider except Altice-owned SFR-Numéricable. When dissatisfied customers dump their current provider, the last choices on their list are SFR and Numéricable. (Images: Univers/Freebox)

Few of these developments have been noticed by regulators and investors in the United States, perhaps owing to the French-English language barrier. But Drahi’s arrival in New York turned out to be just as provocative.

A model of “7 Heavens,” a set of seven luxury chalets under construction in the ski resort of Zermatt. Drahi has already bought two. (Image: Capital.fr)

Last November, Drahi told Wall Street analysts at an investment conference that he does not like paying salaries and if given a chance, he will “pay as little as I can” to his employees. It’s a different story for his tight-knit management team, which have splurged on the 2.65 million stock options windfall granted to them, worth as much as $238 million dollars.

So where do the stacks of cash go? As far as Capital’s team of reporters can tell, it isn’t spent on network improvements, job retention, or customer service. Instead, a handful of top executives are quietly helping themselves to expensive Swiss real estate.

Following the money has not been easy. Drahi and his associates do not want customers to know where their money is being spent. Capital reporters were forced off one property after asking a developer about the buyer of two of seven chalet cottages nestled in the hills with a breathtaking view of the Matterhorn, Switzerland’s most famous mountain peak. That view came with a $45 million price tag. Drahi told Capital he knew nothing about the project, but newly-revealed documents from municipal authorities obtained by Capital reporters found Drahi-owned subsidiary NDZ was the buyer, and nobody expects the tony digs will house customer service agents.

But that isn’t enough for “Monsieur Altice.” In Cologny, a chic suburb of Geneva, Drahi’s 3,000 meter property surrounded by high fences and expensive security set him back around $19 million. He already owned a 2,400 meter property on the same street, acquired in 2000 for the modest sum of $7.4 million (he put the house in his wife’s name). Sixteen years later, it was time for an upgrade as a dozen construction trucks, like those when you browse the Boom & Bucket inventory, arrived to begin a major renovation.

Dexter Goei, CEO of Altice, bought this property in Collonge-Bellerive, in the village of Vésenaz, close to Geneva. The Swiss magazine Bilan estimates Goei is worth $275-370 million and growing. (Image: Capital.fr)

But wait, there is more. Drahi also invested 15 million euros for a 4,400 meter plot of land on which he’s building two villas with 700 meters of space each. On Jan. 15, also in Cologny, Drahi acquired another property via Canef worth an estimated $14 million.

Back in France, some customers were incensed to learn Drahi’s property shopping spree includes an advantageous tax package courtesy of the Swiss government, which bends over backwards hoping to attract the foreign super rich. Critics complain the Swiss effort to attract billionaires comes with premise a spare million or two might drop from their pockets onto the streets of Geneva and other major Swiss cities. Alas, Drahi has kept his money for himself. Altogether, Capital found over $110 million of Drahi’s money was invested in Swiss luxury properties.

Not to be left out of the Money Party, some Altice executives have moved money into Swiss real estate as well:

• At Collonge-Bellerive, another upscale suburb of Geneva, Jeremiah Bonnin, the Secretary General of Altice, spent around $14 million on a 3,000 meter property;
• Five minutes down the road is the $7.7 million estate of Altice CEO Dexter Goei.

Even former executives don’t leave the company empty-handed. Eric Denoyer, former director general of SFR-Numéricable for just one year, walked away with €2 million golden parachute, a €400,000 salary, and a gift of 1.2 million shares of the company.

After 44 years in the cable television business, the Dolan family has agreed to part with its prize possession, Cablevision Systems Corp. in a $17.7 billion dollar deal with Patrick “The Slasher” Drahi’s Altice NV.

The transaction will profoundly impact Cablevision’s employees, customers, and potentially the cable business in general in the New York City metropolitan area, where Cablevision’s 3.1. million customers live.

Who is Patrick Drahi?

Although few Americans have heard of the self-made billionaire Patrick Drahi, most of French-speaking Europe knows Mr. Drahi only too well, regularly criticized in the French press for surrounding himself with debt-laden acquisitions, stiffing vendors and suppliers, and paying rock-bottom wages to the employees that remain after constant campaigns of ruthless cost cutting.

Drahi’s idol is none other than cable magnate billionaire John Malone, the man pulling the strings at Charter Communications. In the 1970s and 1980s, Malone ran America’s largest cable conglomerate – Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), a company castigated by customers for high rates and poor service about as much as Comcast is today.

Malone’s reputation with the U.S. Congress reached its lowest point in the 1980s when then-Sen. Al Gore, Jr. (D-Tenn.) alternately accused Malone of heading a monopolistic cable “Cosa Nostra” that extorted his constituents with rate increases that exceeded 180% in less than five years and the “Darth Vader of Cable.” Malone taught Drahi that massive sums of money could be made buying and selling cable television (and later broadband) over systems that are usually de facto monopolies. Although entertainment is always in high demand, few governments treat the cable systems that offer it as an “essential utility,” allowing them to charge whatever they want for service.

From his earliest days working for a small cable operator, Drahi dreamed of building a cable empire buying and selling cable systems, extracting whatever he could from subscribers. One of his earliest techniques was flouting a French telecommunications law that, at the time, forbade the carriage of non-French language channels. His cable systems quietly added Arabic language networks to entice the large North African immigrant community in France to sign up for service. Drahi did not directly promote the networks, relying on word-of-mouth to deliver sales in the Arabic speaking community.

The Sacred Monster

While very conservative about spending money on wages, service upgrades, and technology, customers of Drahi-owned cable companies report he had no problem raising their rates. Numericable’s customer satisfaction rating rivals that of Comcast — a one-star cable company charging five-star prices.

Drahi

The announced acquisition of Cablevision (and earlier Suddenlink) by Drahi’s company — Altice NV, came with glowing coverage from the American media, particularly cable business news channels, the Wall Street press, and the New York Times. A Sept. 7, 2015 piece by Nicola Clark in the Times presented Drahi as a classic “rags to riches” success story, noting he loathes being interviewed and allegedly leads a humble existence:

Despite a personal fortune estimated at close to €17 billion, Mr. Drahi indulges in few of the trappings of great wealth, friends and colleagues said. Although he keeps several elegant homes — in Geneva, Paris and Tel Aviv — his personal tastes and habits hew to the mundane. He wears a plastic Swatch instead of a Rolex and often arrives at business meetings on foot or a bicycle, instead of by chauffeured car.

Clark only mentions in passing she relied almost entirely on a series of interviews with “a half-dozen friends and colleagues” to paint what turned out to be a one-sided picture of Mr. Drahi for American readers. That story had eyes rolling among staffers in the offices of French newspaper Les Echos, incredulous at the American infatuation with a man the newspaper calls the “sacré monstre” — sacred monster. In New York, reporter Lucie Robequain, foreign business correspondent for the French daily, tried to share the scene at the Goldman Sachs-organized Communacopia conference where the deal was personally announced by Mr. Drahi for her French readers.

“Newspapers [in America] devote entire pages [about Drahi], emphasizing his self-made-man side which Americans love so much,” Robequain noted. She added the New York Times painted Drahi an almost romantic figure, proposing to his wife one hour after meeting her and then putting everything between them at risk to build his personal fortune.

A later piece in the Times on Sept. 17 by Emily Steel and Mark Scott also was the subject of derision in the European press. Steel and Scott called Altice a “bold new player” in the American cable market and gave Dexter Goei, one of Drahi’s lieutenants (some in the French press prefer ‘minion’) space to gush about the game-changing deal. Goei joined Altice in 2009, having worked for 15 years in investment banking with JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley until the Great Recession arrived.

“There’s a new sheriff in town, and we’re probably going to run it a little differently,” Goei said during the investor conference in New York on Thursday that unveiled the deal.

Phantom Fiber

The Times piece also relied on unnamed “analysts” dangling the promise of fiber optics to appease subscribers concerned about a legendary cost-cutter taking the helm of the cable company.

[…] Analysts said Altice invests heavily in new infrastructure — with a focus on upgrading fixed-line networks with the latest fiber-optic technology. The priority, analysts said, is to provide subscribers with faster Internet connection speeds at competitive prices.

Previous deals involving Altice (Image: Financial Times)

In Europe, the press is skeptical about promised upgrades, noting Altice is “an empire built on a mountain of debt” largely made possible by quantitative easing and record low interest rates, which permit companies to finance buyouts on the cheap. Drahi says he can save money through synergy — sharing operations and minimizing the need for customers to reach out for customer service. Altice officials claim just by simplifying Cablevision’s bills, the company can save $14 million annually.

Drahi’s success story with Wall Street and other investors comes from his ability to cut costs at acquired companies, often dramatically. It is part of the informal deal with investors that has allowed the company generous credit to continue its buying spree. The Cablevision deal promises the Dolans and other investors only $3.3 billion in cash. The rest of the purchase price will come from raising $8.6 billion in new debt, saddled on Cablevision’s books inside Altice.

So while unnamed analysts are promising fiber upgrades for Cablevision customers, the Financial Times and CNBC report only one thing will be on Cablevision’s menu post-merger: spending a lot less, not more. Drahi seems to agree.

In a slide presentation to investors, Altice compares Cablevision’s $49 a month in operating expenses per customer against what its Numericable operation in France spends on its customers: $14 a month.

So how does Numericable spend three times less on subscribers than Cablevision?

Cost Cutting Specialists

Say hello to Michel Combes, former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent. Two years ago, he took leadership of the company that was better known by many as Bell Labs. Known as a cost-cutter, Combes quickly announced plans to strip the company of less profitable business units and fired about 10,000 workers while also holding the line on salaries (except for his) of the remaining employees. After two years in the leadership position, Combes engineered the sale of the company to Nokia, putting himself out of a job. But he won’t be hurting. A breathtaking golden parachute package approved by his colleagues on Alcatel Lucent’s board caused a political furor in France.

Combes

Combes’ departure bonus was originally planned to amount to $15 million in stock after completing the company’s sale to Nokia, an amount Emmanuel Macron, France’s economic minister, called shocking and irresponsible. Under pressure, the board has since cut the payoff roughly in half. But according to L’Observateur, Drahi has offered his friend an even more lucrative “golden hello” — stock options awarded as a signing bonus worth up to $100 million. Combes’ first role will be to serve as Altice’s chief operating officer, presiding over new rounds of cost-cutting at the company’s various acquisitions. One item spared from review is Combes’ own compensation package. Those under him are not so lucky.

Wages and Jobs

“I do not like to pay salaries, I pay as little as I can,” Drahi told investors at the Goldman Sachs event last week. Drahi complained more than 300 employees at Cablevision were being paid more than $300,000 a year. “This we will change.“

In addition to a large number of expected layoffs at Cablevision, widespread salary reductions are also likely to be forthcoming. Drahi’s cable companies have some of the smallest compensation packages in the industry, except at the top executive level.

Cablevision’s already testy relationship with some of its union employees will likely grow much worse under Drahi’s leadership. But that battle may have to wait until another day. In February, the union ratified a two-year agreement with Cablevision. In Europe, Drahi’s reputation among public unions is so poor many of the opinions expressed by unionized workers cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

Suppliers complain Drahi’s companies don’t pay their bills.

In Lisbon, Jorge Felix – a representative of the trade union organization of workers at PT (Portugal Telecom) warns U.S. unions should get everything from Altice and Mr. Drahi in writing.

“There are commitments made by Altice before our union and are written,” Felix said, adding that he was disturbed by Drahi’s attitude toward his middle class employees. Felix notes Drahi has already created tremendous controversy in Portugal by stonewalling payment of suppliers and vendors’ outstanding invoices until the company secures written agreements promising enormous discounts, often amounting to 30-40% off current prices. That, in turn, can cause layoffs and salary reductions at suppliers, enriching Altice but hurting just about everyone else.

Drahi: Looking to run faster than the music

France’s Economic Minister Macron seems to agree, lashing out at Drahi’s now familiar business model.

“Is it good for the economy? The answer is no,” he said. “Is it good for investment? The answer is no. Is it good for employment? The answer is no.”

Macron also expressed concern that Drahi’s telecom empire was growing too fast — and taking on too much debt too quickly.

“I have a big concern in terms of leverage on Drahi due to its size and its place in our economy,” he said. “That’s my responsibility to look at it. He is looking to run faster than the music.”

Macron

Macron and his staff are concerned many of Drahi’s top executives and advisers come from New York’s financial markets and investment banks who either left or were pushed out in the turmoil of the Great Recession. Macron worries Drahi could be constructing the world’s first “too big to fail” cable operator that could cost nearly 100,000 jobs and require a government bailout if things turn sour.

Promised Service Improvement & Upgrades

With each cable consolidation merger, companies routinely promise subscribers will benefit from improved service. As mentioned earlier, unnamed analysts predict Drahi could invest up to $30 billion to improve the cable companies he buys in the United States.

“Which Altice are they talking about,” asks Stop the Cap! reader François Ribaud. “Altice owns Numericable, the largest cable company in metropolitan France, and if they are spending money it certainly was not on us.”

Ribaud’s original cable company Noos was acquired by Numericable in a massive acquisition effort in the early 2000s which today leaves almost all of France served by a single cable operator — Numericable.

“Things stagnated after that because Patrick Drahi does not spend money unless he has to,” Ribaud said. “The set-top boxes are outdated, the broadband service is often oversold, and heaven help you if there are service problems. The North African call center customer service help is an example for Numericable of getting what you pay for. They are awful.”

Charles Dolan

Drahi’s competitors in the fixed line and wireless markets eventually forced his wallet open, requiring an investment in fiber optics to help it remain a player in one of Europe’s most contentious telecommunications price wars. Drahi’s company in France lost subscribers as its network suffered from a lack of needed upgrades to manage demand.

“Now that I live in New York, I can say it is completely different than in France,” Ribaud said. “There is certainly no price war here, so there is no need to spend more money. The only people spending money will be customers I assure you.”

The Creator of Home Box Office Signs Off

Cablevision has been rumored “for sale” for so long without a deal, many analysts predicted the founding family would never let go of the company founded by 88-year old Charles Dolan, who helped transform what used to be a rural service to help customers receive distant over the air stations over a shared antenna into an urban and suburban subscription television business. Dolan made cable television something more.

Dolan founded Home Box Office (HBO), a commercial-free premium movie and entertainment channel free from the network “standards and practices” divisions that removed profanity and edited out violence from movies originally shown intact in theaters.

Cablevision systems used to cover 2.9 million subscribers in 19 states, many in small and medium-sized communities. By the 1990s, cable systems were swapped or sold to build regional empire-like service areas. Cablevision was no different, retreating to just three large service areas in New York, Cleveland and Boston. Soon thereafter, Cablevision would only serve metropolitan New York, particularly in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Long Island, parts of northern New Jersey and Connecticut, while exiting Cleveland and Boston.

The New York Post reported secret talks for the sale began in June, and a deal was complete at the end of August. Some of the discussions took place on a yacht floating around the Mediterranean. The Post reports the sale of Cablevision was an emotional experience for Dolan and he still thinks of the people who work there as family. But in the end, the Dolan family’s proceeds from the sale will reinforce their already well-established wealth and prominence. The same is unlikely to be true for Cablevision’s employees and customers under Drahi’s cost-conscious leadership.

Verizon’s FiOS expansion is still dead.

Verizon Communications does not see its remaining landline customers as part of the company’s future growth and customers should not be surprised if Verizon sells more of its legacy network to other telephone companies including Frontier, Windstream, and CenturyLink.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference 2015 on March 2, Verizon chief financial officer Fran Shammo made it clear to investors Verizon will dump “non-core” assets that do not align with the company’s future long-term growth strategy, even in areas where FiOS predominates.

Shammo told investors Verizon’s growth strategy is predicated on Verizon Wireless, which will continue to get most of the company’s attention and future investment.

“It’s all around the wireless network and I’ve consistently said before, you should anticipate that wireless CapEx continues to trend up while wireline continues to trend down,” Shammo said.

The bulk of Verizon’s investments in its wired network are being made in areas that are already designated as FiOS fiber to the home service areas. Shammo explained that the company is required to invest in FiOS expansion to comply with agreements signed in cities like New York and Philadelphia to make the service widely available in those communities. Beyond those commitments, Shammo signaled the company isn’t planning any significant new spending to upgrade the rest of its legacy copper network.

“We continue to invest in those things that we believe are the future growth of the company,” Shammo said, and anything involving its wired networks outside of Verizon’s core FiOS service area in the northeast and Mid-Atlantic states probably doesn’t qualify.

What will happen in Verizon service areas that are not considered priorities?

“For the right price and right terms, if there’s an asset we don’t believe is strategic to Verizon and can return shareholder value, we’ll dispose of that asset,” Shammo said.

An example of that strategy was Verizon’s sudden announcement in February it would sell its wireline assets in Florida, California, and Texas to Frontier Communications for $10.54 billion. Although a significant part of those service areas are served by FiOS after Verizon invested more than $7 billion on upgrades, Verizon still plans to abandon customers and walk away from that investment because it is not part of Verizon’s future growth strategy.

“If you look at Florida, Texas, and California, these are three island properties,” Shammo told investors. “FiOS is a very small footprint of those properties compared to the copper [except in] Florida because it was just Tampa. But you look at that and you say strategically there’s really not much we can do with those properties because they are islands.”

Verizon will spend the proceeds from its latest landline sale on the wireless spectrum it just acquired and will pay down some of the debt incurred after buying out Vodafone’s former ownership stake in Verizon Wireless. The company has also undertaken a massive share repurchase program, planning to buy back 100 million shares by 2017 to help its shareholders. To ease investor concerns about some of Verizon’s latest strategic moves, it also announced plans to buy back an extra $5 billion worth of shares in the second quarter of this year.

A close review of the latest Verizon sale to Frontier shows the extent Verizon believes in its wireless business at the cost of its legacy copper and FiOS networks. That comes as no surprise to Verizon observers who note its current CEO used to run Verizon Wireless.

Shammo, as featured on a recent cover of CFO Studio magazine.

“It’s been clear for years that Verizon has wanted out of the copper business,” said Doug Dawson from CCG Consulting. “They first sold off large portions of New England to Fairpoint. Then in 2010 they sold a huge swath of lines in fourteen states to Frontier including the whole state of West Virginia. And now comes this sale. It’s starting to look like Verizon doesn’t want to be in the landline business at all, perhaps not even in the fiber business.”

Verizon’s latest sale involves “higher margin properties than the rest of our wireline business,” Shammo said, in part because large parts of the urban service areas involved were previously upgraded to FiOS.

“So if you look at Dallas, we were over 50% penetrated both in TV and broadband,” said Shammo. “So, it was a very highly penetrated market that was delivering a lot of cash flow and delivering a lot of earnings. So by just divesting of the three properties, if you just did it on an apples-to-apples basis, there would be dilution.

Giving up that amount of cash flow — needed to win back the $7 billion in FiOS upgrade investments Verizon made in the three states — would normally concern investors worried about the “stranded costs” left over from investments that were never fully repaid. But Verizon has a plan for that: an “Involuntary Separation Plan” (ISP) for more than 2,000 Verizon employees, a polite way to describe job-cutting layoffs.

“We have a year to plan for this and the plan is similar to what we did with the last time we rolled properties out from Frontier,” Shammo said. “We will plan to offset the stranded cost and those plans are already being worked. You saw a little bit of that in the fourth quarter where we gave some ISPs to the represented employee base and we had 2,100 people come off payroll.”

Verizon’s growing preoccupation with Verizon Wireless leaves some analysts questioning the company’s wisdom giving up high-profit FiOS broadband in favor of wireless at a time when competition among wireless companies is finally emerging.

“Verizon reports an overall 41% market penetration for its data product on FiOS networks,” said Dawson. “Data has such a high profit margin that it’s hard to think that FiOS is not extremely profitable for them. The trend has been for the amount of data used by households to double every three years, and one doesn’t have to project that trend forward very far to see that future bandwidth needs are only going to be met by fiber or by significantly upgraded cable networks.”

Considering the wireless market is maturing and most everyone who wants a cell phone already has one, there are questions about where Verizon sees future growth in a business where it is getting harder to attract new customers.

“Verizon was a market leader getting into the fiber business. FiOS was a bold move at the time,” Dawson reflects. “It’s another bold move to essentially walk away from the fiber business and concentrate on wireless. They obviously think that wireless has a better future than wireline. But since they are already at the top of pile in cellular one has to wonder where they see future growth?”

Money for some

Time Warner Cable will pay $416 million in retention bonuses to the company’s top and middle management to entice them to stay with the cable company as its merger deal with Comcast is scrutinized by regulators.

The bulk of the bonuses will be paid to the company’s top executives in New York, but an additional 1,800 middle management employees would also receive twice their regularly scheduled annual equity award to compensate for canceled awards in 2015 and 2016. About 15,000 rank and file employees eligible to participate in Time Warner’s supplemental bonus program will receive a much smaller bonus — averaging less than $70 per employee.

While upper level management will gorge on cash and stock, middle management will receive stock only. Rank and file employees will receive a token payout amounting to 50 percent of their target bonus for 2014. Recipients may want to save the money. As part of Comcast’s plans to realize cost savings from the merger, many employees of Time Warner Cable’s call centers and technical staff may not have a future paycheck at all if the merger is approved. Comcast relies heavily on existing offshore call centers for customer service and subcontracts a significant percentage of engineering and service call work to third-party subcontractors.

Among the top recipients of the largesse:

• Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus, who will receive a golden parachute package worth $81.8 million in cash, restricted stock and stock options. Because his compensation package is so large, Time Warner Cable has also agreed to pay an extra $300,000 to allow Marcus to hire his own financial planning firm to manage the enormous sums involved;
• The other top five executives of Time Warner Cable in New York will share more than $136 million in golden parachute compensation. They will have to figure out how to spend the money on their own.

Out: Hesse

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has left the building. He won’t be the last.

Hesse was appointed to lead Sprint in December 2007 after the catastrophic mess created when Sprint and Nextel merged. Now he’s gone because of his catastrophic failure to convince regulators a merger with T-Mobile USA made sense.

Brightstar Corporation CEO Marcelo Claure, appointed to Sprint’s board of directors by Softbank Mobile CEO Masayoshi Son earlier this year, is now in charge, and his commitment to save Sprint isn’t much different from what Hesse promised almost seven years earlier.

“The strategy is simple,” Mr. Claure said in an interview Monday. “We have to get back in the game.”

On a company-wide town hall call on Thursday, Claure outlined his three priorities: cut prices, improve the network, and decrease operational costs. Priority number one, price reductions, which have already started.

In: Claure

Claure blasted Sprint’s current pricing models, which he admitted were out of line considering how bad Sprint’s network is these days. He also trashed Sprint’s upgrade efforts, calling the “rip and replace” method of upgrading individual cell sites too slow, admitted social media networks were loaded with negative comments about Sprint’s performance, and that absolutely nobody understood the company’s most recent marketing attempt – a talking hamster selling Sprint’s Framily plan.

“We’re going to change our plans to make sure they are simple and attractive and make sure every customer in America thinks twice about signing up to a competitor,” he said. “When you have a great network, you don’t have to compete on price. When your network is behind, unfortunately you have to compete on value and price.”

Sprint’s network isn’t just behind, it’s downright prehistoric in places. Its 3G network borders on unusable in large cities, WiMAX is on life support, and Sprint’s 4G LTE network expansion is taking so long, by the time it is finished, LTE might be considered passé.  Hesse had avoided a more aggressive timetable to protect Sprint’s share price from the precipitous drop that would come from an upgrade spending spree.

Those days are over.

Claure warned the changes for Sprint would not just include price cuts and upgrades. It will also mean major job cuts, although Claure would not specify exactly how many Sprint employees were headed for the unemployment office. Unlimited data may also be headed for the door – Claure would not commit to retaining the unlimited use wireless data plans Sprint has been known for under Hesse’s leadership. Kansas City officials are also worried Sprint’s new executive team wants to move the company headquarters west, likely to California.

Masayoshi Son and Claure both agree that U.S. regulators were no fans of Sprint either — sending clear and unambiguous warnings that continued efforts to merge Sprint with T-Mobile USA were futile. So a proposed merger between the two companies is off. T-Mobile USA CEO John Legere wasted no time piling on, advising Sprint customers in tweets to #SprintLikeHell to another wireless carrier (preferably his).

Some predictable grumbling from Wall Street has also been heard over Claure’s plans to disrupt the comfortable profits earned by American wireless companies.

“Expect capital spending to rise,” says analyst firm Moffett Nathanson in a research note. “They will also have to cut their service prices, which are simply are too high relative to competitors.”

With a dramatic cut in prices, Sprint’s financials will look “ugly” in the coming quarters.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Here is Why Sprint Stopped Talks With T-Mobile 8-6-14.flv[/flv]

Sprint ended talks to acquire T-Mobile US a person with knowledge of the matter said, as regulatory concerns outweighed the potential benefits of combining the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carries. Bloomberg’s Alex Sherman reports on “Market Makers.” (4:07)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Sprint Faces Tough Road Running Business 8-6-14.flv[/flv]

Craig Moffett, founder of MoffettNathanson LLC, talks about reports of Sprint Corp.’s decision to end talks to acquire T-Mobile US Inc. due to regulatory concerns. Moffett speaks with Tom Keene and Brendan Greeley on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance.” (3:25)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Sprints Dropped T-Mobile Bid Adds Options Ergen 8-7-14.flv[/flv]

Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen said Sprint’s decision to drop its bid for T-Mobile US has opened up more options for his satellite-TV carrier as it looks for ways to expand into the wireless business. Alex Sherman reports on “In The Loop.” (4:01)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Sprint CEO Right Man for Right Company 8-11-14.flv[/flv]

Patterson Advisory Group Chairman and CEO Jim Patterson and Bloomberg Intelligence Telecom Analyst John Butler discuss challenges facing Sprint’s new CEO Marcelo Claure. Patterson and Butler speak on “In The Loop.” (5:47)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Is Sprints New CEO up to the Challenges He Faces 8-11-14.flv[/flv]

Bill Ho, principal analyst at 556 Ventures, and Bloomberg Intelligence’s John Butler discuss expectations for Sprint’s new Chief Executive Officer Marcello Claure and look at the challenges he faces as the head of the nation’s number three wireless company. They speak on “Market Makers.” (6:56)