do "one more big deal." In Feb- ruary 2004, Comcast made an unsolicited offer for Disney, which it withdrew in April 2004, when its own shareowners showed little enthusiasm for the deal and Disney's board strongly opposed 3. At the time, one might have constructed a reasonable argument that the more attractive long-term option for AT&T shareowners might be to stay the course and spin AT&T Broadband off as a separate company. J. P. Morgan had recently published a paper endorsing AT&T Broadband's telephony strategy, and Sanford Bernstein had recently completed research that showed a very high level of customer satisfaction among subscribers to its phone service. A new management team was making steady progress in improving margins and had filed suit against John Malone's Starz Encore pay-movie company to get out from under an onerous contract that alone accounted for several points of marginal costs. (Comcast eventually forced Starz Encore to revise the terms dra- matically.) The company's cable upgrades were back on track after a period of neglect; in fact, when Comcast took over, it was sur- prised to find the physical plant in far better shape than it had anticipated. A November 2001 survey of AT&T's individual share- holders showed a dramatic shift in attitude; 55 percent, up from 24 percent, now believed that they would benefit more from a spin-off of AT&T Broadband than from a sale. An early December assessment of institutional investors showed views shifting toward going it alone, whereas a solid majority had wanted the unit to be sold just a month earlier. However, in the end, the board judged the risks to the rest of the company if the spin-off of AT&T Broadband somehow failed or was seriously delayed to be too great. 4. "A Rocky Road for AT&T," editorial, New York Times, July 16, 2001. 5. Clark Judge, "Management Journal: PR Lessons from the Penta- gon," Wall Street Journal, April I, 2003. Chapter 15 I. Steve Rosenbush, "AT&T and BellSouth Talk Merger," Business- Week, October 6, 2001. 2. Serious merger d