WorldCom--Mind blowing event

How WorldCom was made to die


The loyal employees' actions drove  WorldCom into death pit and de-listing and bankruptcy.

It led to thousands of their  colleagues losing jobs and viciously truncated the stock market. While 

the corporate custodians immersed in  dishonesty  a  band of middle managers who did not fit into 

what was called Cowboy culture of Worldcom, took their professional ethics seriously and were 

driven by principles and commitment to financial reporting to extraordinary heights .

Amidst  obstruction by fellow employees , even the auditors  and unwillingness  to contradict 

bosses these employees stood ground .

WorldCom was victim of another form of greed that led to an accounting scandal which  created 

billions in non-existing profit.The price again for greedy  strategy for growth was paid by investing 

public and employees

The company had accumulated more than $ 40 billion debts. A crucial merger with Sprint was 

called off in the year 2000 and to hide the financial condition of the company, Scott Sullivan (CFO), 

David Myers (Controller) and Buford Yates (Director of Accounting) resorted to 


supporting   falsified numbers and inflated revenue with fictitious entries and misrepresented 

operational expenses as capital expenditure.

Probably these acts later on inspired  the Enrons  of the world to follow similar route . This fraud 

got Bernard Ebbers 25 years’ jail. The company now operates as MCI Inc. and is a part of Verizon. 

This case represents collective leadership failure and fraud driven by greed. .


In all these crises created by people in power, there is a common thread. First is the personal greed 

and second is the failure of the system to learn from similar past events. These crises had impacted 

many totally unrelated organizations fatally and had shaken the trust of investing people. These 

organizations are solely to be blamed with unpreparedness for crisis and change.

.............readon

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