st global networks. Anyone want to offer Mike Armstrong an apology?" Anderson's op-ed didn't create a groundswell of contrarian com- mentary on Armstrong's tenure at AT&T. He quietly left the company just six months later and was just as happy that not much was written about it. Credibility Breaks All Ties The last asset that a company should surrender is its credibility. More precious than anything in its treasury, credibility cannot be bought or leased. It must be earned. It's about behavior- delivering on promises, not simply making them. Credibility is built over time, but can be lost in an instant. Once it is lost, it is even harder to regain. In the court of public opinion, the winner is not the one who spins the best tale or generates the most ink; it's the one whom the public trusts. Enter Comcast Armstrong couldn't fathom why SO many people didn't get it. Armed to lay out the rationale for AT&T's restructuring one more time, he traveled to the January 2001 media conference and extravaganza mounted by Salomon Smith Barney's star analyst, Jack Grubman. But if restructuring the company addressed a number of thorny financial issues, it also created new ones, and the biggest among them was that it put into play the very cable assets that Armstrong had assembled at such a high financial and psychic cost. Comcast's Roberts family, father and son, had never really aban- doned their lust for the MediaOne properties that AT&T had ripped from their grasp. When, in October 2000, AT&T announced its inten- tion to spin off its cable division as a separate company, they saw an opportunity to get back into the game. Brian Roberts was also at the Salomon Smith Barney conference, Tough Calls and he asked to meet privately with Armstrong and Noski in his suite at the Scottsdale Princess Resort. He wasted little time in getting to the point, proposing a merger between AT&T's cable division and Comcast. He argued that a merger would be quicker than the path AT&T had proposed, would face less market uncertainty, and would cre