WorldCom

US telecommunications company, founded in 1983 as Long Distance Discount Service (LDDS), and renamed WorldCom in 1995. Its aggressive acquisition of competitors made it one of the biggest benefactors of the 1990s telecommunications boom. However, in June 2002, the company admitted overstating its profits by US$3.8 billion over the previous five quarters, leaving it close to bankruptcy and forcing it to announce 17,000 redundancies. The fraud sparked turmoil in the US stock market, causing a knock-on effect in markets around the world. The following month it became the largest US company ever to file for bankruptcy protection.

In 1996, WorldCom acquired MFS, a networking company that had already bought the Internet Service Provider UUNET Technologies, Inc. WorldCom completed the takeover of its rival MCI in 1998, becoming MCI WorldCom. In 1999, MCI WorldCom announced that it would acquire Sprint, another US telecommunications rival, whereupon the resulting company would revert to the name WorldCom. However, the takeover was abandoned in July 2000, as a result of conditions imposed by the US Department of Justice, which were not acceptable to either company.

Bernie Ebbers, who was an early investor in the company, became its chief executive in 1985 but was forced to resign in 2001 after a loans scandal.