Bell Atlantic- GTE Merger

Abstract

Bell Atlantic completed the acquisition of GTE on June 30, 2000, and the new entity was named as Verizon Communications. Bell Atlantic Corp acquired GTE in an all-stock deal valued at $52.8 billion combining Bell Atlantic’s local and wireless phone service with GTE’s local, long-distance, wireless, and Internet businesses. The merged companies build upon GTE’s and Bell Atlantic’s complementary strengths. The merger was in line with the focused strategy to offer one bundled telecommunication service to customers in which local, distance, cellular, and Internet services were to be combined. Bell Atlantic and GTE served over 10.6 million wireless customers in the United States. By means of acquiring GTE, Bell Atlantic became United States’ largest local phone company serving more than 63 million customers. GTE was the third largest local company service provider in the United States behind Bell Atlantic and SBC Communications. Together Atlantic and GTE employed more than 250,000 people. The new Verizon company controlled a third of the US local telephone market with approximately 63 million local lines and 25 million cell phone customers in 40 states of the United States. The merger facilitated Verizon Communications to intensify its drive toward selling complete package of communications offerings which ranged from long-distance and local telephone service to wireless and high-speed Internet service. The cumulative returns for Bell Atlantic during the 252-day period surrounding the merger announcement (−18- to +233-day period) were 32.5%.