PROFILE : PacTel CEO’s Success Results in ‘Demotion’

The week before Christmas, Pacific Telesis Group chief executive Philip J. Quigley flew to Washington to personally knock on the doors of the congressional representatives on whose votes his company’s future depended.

The 53-year-old career telecommunications executive was a bit out of his element in the Capitol building, but he wanted to make perfectly clear his vigorous support for the federal telecommunications bill that would allow telephone companies such as his to compete more freely in an era of emerging technologies.

Ironically, the fruits of his success on the regulatory front will result in Quigley’s losing his top wrung on the corporate ladder under SBC Communications Inc.’s $16.7-billion takeover proposal for San Francisco-based PacTel.

Under the deal announced Monday, the merged company will take the name of San Antonio-based SBC and be led by SBC Chairman and Chief Executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr. Quigley, currently chairman, president and chief executive of PacTel, will become vice chairman of the combined company.

The marriage announcement of the telephone companies--PacTel owns Pacific Bell and SBC was formerly known as Southwestern Bell--comes less than two months after Congress passed a sweeping telecommunications bill that Quigley had so strongly supported.

Many industry analysts had expected the bill to trigger a wave of deals in the telecommunications industry because the law lifted barriers that had prevented the regional Bells from merging. But PacTel was not expected to move so quickly.

“While others are talking about it, we’re doing it,” Quigley said at a news conference Monday.

A native of San Francisco who was raised in Southern California and graduated from Cal State Los Angeles, Quigley joined Pacific Bell in 1969 and has remained with the company ever since.

Adapting to change has required a painful reorganization that has resulted in thousands of layoffs at Pac Bell under Quigley’s tenure.

Quigley, 53, who assumed his current position in April 1994, said PacTel has also struggled with the 1993 spinoff of its cellular operations into a separate company. That move, which was championed by Quigley’s predecessor, Sam Ginn, left PacTel without the high-profit businesses it needed to help subsidize low-cost, local telephone operations, consumer advocates say.

Times Staff Writer Amy Harmon contributed to this story.