Digital Common Sense

New York Times
Ebbers Mounts an I-Never-Knew Defense
By KEN BELSON
Published: March 1, 2005

Bernard J. Ebbers, the former WorldCom chief executive once hailed as one of the most brilliant telecommunications entrepreneurs ever, told a packed courtroom yesterday, “I don’t know about technology and I don’t know about finance and accounting.”

In taking the stand in his own defense, Mr. Ebbers displayed a folksy innocence that was part of the defense effort to cast him as someone who relied on others with greater expertise to handle the details of running WorldCom as it grew from a small regional reseller of phone services to one of the largest companies in America.

Since when do incompetent boards of directors reward and continue to pay incompetents who don’t know what’s going on in their companies. Anyone who buys this sorry excuse for management really needs to understand that this, along with the Enron scandal are solid representations of the good reasons being changes so many of us are fighting like Sarbanes-Oxley.

Filed by Ken at 8:21 pm under General