- ous financial position, and Armstrong first raised the possibility of breaking up the company. While the company was not yet in a liquidity crisis, the sound of bouncing checks was not far off. No one was sure how long the com- pany's deteriorating operating results would support its debt rating. The consequences of failing to deal with that situation were disastrous on every level. Cash on hand seldom matches outgoing cash to the penny at any company. With its current credit rating, AT&T could borrow money overnight if it needed cash to cover the checks it wrote. When it had more cash in its bank accounts than it needed, it lent that cash to other creditworthy companies that temporarily needed it. This was how the so-called commercial paper market worked. But if the company's debt rating were lowered, not only would its borrowing costs significantly increase, but the commercial paper market could eventually be closed to it. AT&T had debt of $32 billion coming due within a year, and in the fall of 2000, the company had a standby line of credit, or a "bank facility," of only $10 billion. (In one of his last acts as CFO, Somers had reduced the bank facility to save on the associated fees.) The com- pany would have to line up a consortium of banks that were willing to increase its backup facility by about $25 billion. Meanwhile, its growth businesses had a seemingly insatiable appetite for capital. Ironically, if each business were a separate company, each would have its own credit rating, and (thanks to the vagaries of the debt mar- kets) their combined borrowing capacity would be greater than that of a single, integrated AT&T. Furthermore, at least two of the divisions (AT&T Broadband and AT&T Wireless) had growth rates that were attractive enough to support their own equity offerings, which would have given them another potential source of cash. Finally, it really bugged Armstrong that investors saw the sum of AT&T's businesses as an enterprise with only modest growth and de- It's Okay to Change Your Mind clini