Another Top-Level AT&T; Exec to Resign

AT&T;’s chief financial officer said Monday that he is quitting, the second top-level departure from the giant long-distance phone company since John R. Walter took over as president last fall.

Richard W. Miller, 56, will continue as chief financial officer until a replacement is found, expected by the end of March. Miller, who joined the company in 1993, said he wanted to pursue other interests after guiding the massive three-way spinoff of AT&T;’s computer and phone equipment businesses, completed last month.

Like AT&T;’s top consumer chief, Joseph P. Nacchio, who quit in December, Miller was one of the AT&T; executives bypassed when the company chose Walter as president. Miller helped run the company as part of AT&T;’s governing Office of the Chairman, which also includes Chairman Robert Allen, Walter and general counsel John Zeglis.

Miller said he is resigning voluntarily “with a sense of a job accomplished. AT&T; today is a very different company from the one that I joined four years ago,” Miller said in a phone interview, referring to the successful spinoff.

Miller’s departure also comes after a string of disappointing earnings reports by the nation’s largest long-distance company, which has been hit hard by fierce competition from phone rivals.

In the fourth quarter, AT&T; reported lower-than-expected profit amid what analysts described as sluggish growth in revenue from its core long-distance business.

Miller said his departure is unrelated to Walter’s rise to power and subsequent search for a new team to help lead AT&T; from its slump. Walter was hired in October as the company’s president and future replacement to Allen. Putting his first major stamp on AT&T;, Walter in December replaced the head of its ailing consumer unit, Nacchio, with top marketing manager Gail J. McGovern.

Miller said he informed Allen in a letter a year ago that he planned to leave, “long before John Walter came on the scene.”

Miller played an integral role in AT&T;’s spinoff of the NCR computer company and the Lucent Technologies phone equipment division during his 3 1/2 years at AT&T.; Prior to joining AT&T;, he led a reorganization of Wang Laboratories Inc. as chairman and chief executive.

Before that he was with RCA Corp. and General Electric Co., which acquired RCA in 1986, first as CFO and then as executive vice president for consumer products and entertainment.

Miller said the search for his replacement will include candidates from inside and outside the company.

The announcement came after the end of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, where AT&T; closed unchanged at $39.375 a share.