William T Esrey

Chief Executive Officer, Sprint

Bill Esrey is one of the few telecom leaders that people trust and respect. Sprint still carries nearly 30% of all Internet traffic, has some government business, has a lot of corporate business, is a major international carrier, has a big local phone service, is building out those local loops for high speed broadband, has a superb wireless network, has a superb fiber-optic backbone circling the world, and though carrying a lot of debt - most of it attributed to building PCS - is in decent financial shape.

Esrey's watershed came in 1999 when Bernie Ebbers tried to buy him out. Esrey admits it would have been difficult to explain to his stockholders why the takeover should be resisted and in retrospect is very happy it didn't happen. But the simple fact is that the collapse of the WorldCom deal is probably the best thing that could have happened to Sprint. Sprint has been in the serendipitous position of being able to stand outside the acquisition mess and watch all the WorldCom shenanigans as a dispassionate observer rather than an intimately involved (and compromised) costar.