Anti-trust law and the M&A industry

Here’s a wonderful 2 minute sarcastic view of the Telco space by the inimitable Stephen Colbert:

The big winners are the M&A industry (the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley et al have made billions / tens of billions of dollars)

Some of the biggest telco-related M&A deals (thanks to Wikipedia) in the past 10 years have been:

• MCI Communications; with WorldCom; created MCI WorldCom (1997) ($44 billion, Stock: 100%) (Department of Justice, MCI.com)
• Verizon; Bell Atlantic/NYNEX, GTE, and AirTouch Cellular
• Vodafone; with Mannesmann (completed February 2000) ($183 billion, 100% stock) ([3])
• SBC and AT&T (Announced January 31, 2005; Closed October 31, 2005 valued at Apx. $16 Billion) [4] [5]
• AT&T and BellSouth (Announced March 5, 2006; Closed on December 29, 2006 valued at Apx. $86 Billion) [6] [7]
• Verizon with MCI (Announced February 14, 2005; Closed January 6, 2006 valued at Apx. $8.5 Billion) [8][9]
• Sprint with Nextel(Announced December 15, 2004; Closed August 12, 2005 valued at Apx $36 Billion) [10] [11]
• Cingular and AT&T Wireless (Announced February 17, 2004; Closed October 16, 2004 valued at Apx $47 billion) [12][13]