to his team's assessment, he realized that their proposed offer was less than what he thought Malone would accept based on what his (and, for that matter, Somers' own) investment bankers said TCG was worth-upwards of $11 billion. So he pulled his key people aside and, in his smoker's voice, told them to cross all the t's and dot all the i's to make sure that they had uncovered TCG's true value. The not invented here syndrome (which seemed to have been invented at AT&T) must be getting in their way. TCG had to have more value to AT&T than what the deal team had turned up SO far. Sometime during the Christmas holidays of 1997, Somers' team found that value. So when the New Year dawned, we started writing the announcement of what had now been code-named Project Woody while the company's lawyers nailed down just what we were buying and drew up the agreement. On the evening of January 8, 1998, on the hairy edge of making the announcement in time for the next morning's papers, we issued the news release and held a hastily organized teleconference. Arm- strong's quote in the news release bowed in the directions of Wall Street, which would be looking for an indication of his financial strat- egy, and Washington, D.C., which would be looking for an indication of his intentions regarding local service: This is a great match with powerful financial and strategic synerg- ies for both companies. Joining forces with TCG will speed AT&T's entry into the local business market, reduce our costs and enable us to provide businesses the any-distance services they want. The deal would lower earnings per share in the current calendar year, but only slightly, and it would produce sufficient synergies to increase earnings in subsequent years. Little more than two months into the job, Armstrong had begun to reshape the company by attack- ing its greatest vulnerability. Wall Street showed its enthusiasm for the deal as AT&T's stock price increased from $60 a share the day before the announcement to $65 seven trading days later. Tough Call