structuring. Adding to the day's somber mood was a report that I had received just before Armstrong called the meeting to order-the board of Lu- cent Technologies had fired its CEO, Rich McGuinn. I passed a copy of Lucent's news release to Armstrong, who read it aloud to the direc- tors, most of whom had known McGuinn when Lucent was part of AT&T. Armstrong tried to lighten the mood by joking that he could step out of the meeting if the directors wanted to consider similar action. Playing along, one of his best friends on the board suggested instead that he do a "Welch," leaving when he's on top. Sadly, that was a position that Armstrong would never see again. Media Coverage If anyone wants to put an epitaph on my gravestone, I've asked my children to have "this is the next logical step in his transformation" carved into the granite. Almost all the stories positioned the com- pany's restructuring as a "reversal of strategy" and "caving in to Wall Street." But, while AT&T's stock price was certainly a factor in the company's decision to restructure, the overwhelming reason was the need to recapitalize the company SO each unit could fund its growth plans. Incredibly, no reporters or columnists focused on that issue. It Tough Calls doesn't even appear as a factor in the thirty-eight-page Harvard Busi- ness School case that was written on the company's restructuring. Part of the reason was that Armstrong himself focused everyone on whether or not he had changed his strategy. We had arranged for a full-scale analyst meeting at the Sheraton Hotel in mid-Manhattan within hours of the news release's being issued. Because of the stories that had already been written, the analysts were not surprised by the announcement, but they had lots of questions, ranging from how the AT&T brand would be managed across four separate entities to the schedule of the various spin-offs. They were also understandably skep- tical. As one of the company's investment banker's put it, "Because of the events of the last six months, no one thinks