Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
WorldCom Investigation Shifts Focus to Ebbers
Aired July 01, 2002 - 07:31 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now we're going to get our first look this week at some financial news.
Andy Serwer, our editor-at-large at "Fortune" magazine, also minding your business for A.M. this morning.
How are you doing this morning?
ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Good. Great to see you back. Did you miss us at AMERICAN MORNING?
ZAHN: I did.
SERWER: Were you pining away? Pining.
ZAHN: We were, you know, we were very busy and I'll tell you what is so odd about traveling in Asia is that it's very difficult for you to feel like you're plugged in.
SERWER: Right, the time difference.
ZAHN: So every time you got a newspaper with a 13 hour time difference, you were always just somehow a couple hours behind.
SERWER: Well, Bill Hemmer...
ZAHN: But I watched the Martha Stewart mess from overseas.
SERWER: Yes.
ZAHN: They've got a great link in Japan.
SERWER: You missed a lot of stuff on the business front -- Martha Stewart, WorldCom, Rite-Aid, all bad news. Basically just more scandals. And so we want to talk about that a little bit right now.
ZAHN: Go ahead.
SERWER: WorldCom...
ZAHN: Fire away.
SERWER: Yes. WorldCom, more news on the WorldCom front.
Let's go down to Christine Romans at the New York Stock Exchange.
A big report due this morning, Chris, detailing, regulators hope, the improprieties from WorldCom explaining the whole thing, right?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, and it just landed on SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt's desk and he says he's going to make that available to the markets before the open at 9:30 Eastern time.
SERWER: Yes.
ROMANS: So we're going to hear more about this.
And meantime, the "Wall Street Journal" reporting that the focus is starting to shift toward the ousted CEO of WorldCom, Bernie Ebbers. As you know, he left after the stock of that company had just swooned, down some 70 percent. The board saw what it said were lots of different missteps and so he was out, the founder of this company. He put it together with 70 acquisitions. And now, as you know, John Sidgmore is running the show.
Interesting stuff because this weekend we had Bernie Ebbers at his church in Mississippi making his first comments about this, Andy.
SERWER: Right.
ROMANS: Some pretty interesting stuff. He says he did not knowingly commit any kind of fraud. He says I just want you to know you aren't going to church with a crook.
SERWER: This is good, right? He said, yes, I'm not a crook. And the last person to say I'm not a crook, do we remember who that was?
ROMANS: Hmmm.
SERWER: Richard Nixon, right? It kind of rang a little familiar and, of course, he did end up having some troubles. Also, he said, "No one will find me to have knowingly committed fraud."
ROMANS: Right.
SERWER: He said teary-eyed. I don't know about you, I don't know how appropriate that is for a church setting. But maybe that's not my call, that's his call. Anyway, more strange twists and turns.
ROMANS: Yes.
SERWER: We'll wait for the open today, Christine. You know, it's interesting to me because this is the first trading day of the second half of the year, July 1, and everyone is...
ROMANS: Oh, and wasn't the first half so much fun?
SERWER: Right. And everyone kept saying that it would be the second half of the year when the stock market came back. Of course, that was before WorldCom et al.
ROMANS: Yes.
SERWER: So it'll be interesting to see if the market can shake off some of those blues. Of course, we had some terrible quarters, the worst first half for Nasdaq in Nasdaq history.
ROMANS: I think you're going to see, Andy, that you're going to have some big top strategists who are going to start lowering their expectations for the S&P by the end of the year.
SERWER: Right.
ROMANS: I mean I think that's inevitable because all that talk earlier this year about the recovery in the second half and the recovery of the stock markets, it was a really terrible first half. So I have a feeling that we're going to be seeing some tempered expectations for the half, for the second of the year.
SERWER: Yes. It makes sense to me.
All right, Christine, we'll check back in with you later.
ROMANS: Sure.
SERWER: Paula, back over to you.
You know, Amanda Lang is still on vacation. I think I know why.
ZAHN: Why?
SERWER: It's Canada Day.
ZAHN: Oh.
SERWER: July 1.
ZAHN: She must be there for that celebration.
SERWER: Whooping it up, don't you think?
ZAHN: Well, we'll have to rub it in when she gets home...
SERWER: Yes, we will talk about that tomorrow.
ZAHN: ... when we talk about our own Independence Day here later this week on Thursday.
SERWER: Yes, it's a little different. Right.
ZAHN: Thanks, Andy.
See you a little bit later on this morning.
SERWER: OK.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
