PROFILE / IVAN G. SEIDENBERG : For Nynex Chairman, an Unusual Route to the Top
After flunking out of college while the Vietnam War was raging in the 1960s, Ivan G. Seidenberg knew he could soon expect to hear from his local draft board.
But what Seidenberg, then 19, couldn’t have known was that the job he took while awaiting his draft notice--as a cable-splicer’s helper for New York Telephone--would mark the beginning of his climb to the top ranks of the telecommunications industry.
Seidenberg, now 49, took over as chairman and chief executive of New York Telephone’s parent, Nynex Corp., early last year. His mission: transform a traditionally slow-footed company into an aggressive competitor in the rapidly changing telecommunications industry.
Financially, there have been encouraging signs. Nynex’s earnings climbed 19% in the fourth quarter of last year, and many analysts have boosted their profit projections for the company this year.
Seidenberg is now in line to run an even bigger empire. If Nynex and Bell Atlantic Corp. complete the merger agreement they reached over the weekend, the plan is for Seidenberg to serve as vice chairman and chief operating officer of the combined company for a year and then take over the top job from Bell Atlantic’s current chief, Raymond W. Smith.
For Seidenberg, though, it hasn’t been an easy or conventional career ascent. His first stint with New York Telephone, assisting the cable splicers, was cut short when he went into the Army and served as an infantry sergeant in Vietnam; he returned in 1968 a decorated veteran, wounded at Khe Sahn.
Back in New York, he returned to college; after years of night school courses, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from City University of New York in 1972 and an MBA from Pace University in 1980.
He also went on to a succession of operations, engineering and management jobs with New York Telephone, AT&T; and Nynex. Shortly after the so-called Baby Bells were split off from AT&T; in 1984, Nynex put Seidenberg in charge of its new Washington regulatory office, and he earned a reputation as a shrewd negotiator.
A decade later, those skills were put to use when Seidenberg was given responsibility for dealing with Nynex’s unions after the company decided to lay off 16,800 employees, amounting to 22% of its work force. He kept labor peace by negotiating relatively generous buyouts.
Since taking over at Nynex, Seidenberg has burnished his reputation for having a lot of moxie and a fresh outlook.
He has challenged the conventional industry wisdom that consumers will buy all of their communications services from a single company. “I don’t think customers want one-stop shopping,” he told Fortune magazine in an article published last month. “Nobody wants to be owned by a single provider. Anybody who believes he can win all of a customer’s business has got to be crazy.”
He has pushed to win more of the estimated $180 to $210 a month he estimates that households in his region spend on local and long-distance telephone service, video rentals, cable TV and other forms of entertainment. And beyond that, Seidenberg has been interested in cutting more overseas deals along the lines of Nynex’s $470-million investment in Thailand’s telephone company in 1992. As he told Fortune, “I’d rather own 10% of the world than 100% of the Northeast.”
