: Fenix Investors

Since his first days on the job in November, AT&T chairman Michael Armstrong apparently wanted to partner with TCI chairman and CEO John Malone.
Malone — whose sights will shift to control of Liberty Media Group and TCI Ventures Group — vowed that this merger won’t crash and burn, like his 1993 deal to sell TCI to Bell Atlantic Corp.
Malone will leave TCI having extracted $5.5 billion in tax-free cash from AT&T for his new deal vehicle: a combined Liberty Media Group and TCI Ventures Group, under the Liberty name. That comes from Ventures selling to AT&T its controlling stake in @Home Network, the National Digital Television Center and Western Tele-Communications Inc. ($2.5 billion); and AT&T’s own stock, which will come when an earlier deal to sell Teleport Communications Group closes ($3 billion).
Under the merger plan, Hindery would become president and COO of the planned AT&T Consumer Services Co., serving under current AT&T president and COO John Zeglis.
That company will be separated from the”wholesale” network-services operation, which serves business customers, by means of a new tracking stock.
As Malone said last week, Armstrong, who was chairman and CEO of General Motors Corp.’s Hughes Electronics Corp. subsidiary, is probably “the guy that, next to me, knows [the most] about tracking stocks and their appropriate use for shareholder value.”