Verizon to Buy MCI for $5.3 Billion

Verizon on Monday has announced it will acquire long-distance telephone company MCI for $5.3 billion to accelerate its efforts to serve multinational corporations, marking the latest in a series of telecommunications mergers.

MCI was formed as Microwave Communications Inc. in the 1960s and was acquired in 1998 by WorldCom, a Mississippi long-distance telephone reseller that acquired about 60 companies in the 1990s. It became a Wall Street darling with stock market capitalization of about $200 billion before buckling in bankruptcy in 2002 amid an accounting scandal.

WorldCom emerged from bankruptcy last year, using the name MCI.

Full Story