Malone Files to Sell AT&T; Shares

John Malone, AT&T; Corp.’s largest individual shareholder, filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week proposing to sell 5 million shares--or nearly one-fifth of his holdings.

Malone was required to file the papers because he was a member of the AT&T; board of directors until Tuesday, when he resigned. It is not clear whether Malone has yet sold any of the shares.

Neither Malone nor a spokesman at his company, Liberty Media Corp., returned calls Friday.

Malone’s filing followed an unsolicited $39.7-billion bid Sunday by Comcast Corp. for AT&T; Broadband, the cable unit that is the most valuable asset within the troubled telecommunications giant.

AT&T; was among the most active stocks on Wall Street this week, when 157 million shares traded hands. By Friday, daily volume had returned to the yearly average of 13.9 million shares, down from 59 million on Tuesday.

AT&T; shares closed down 58 cents Friday to $20.87 on the New York Stock Exchange, after rising 21% since Monday.

Malone filed his proposal to sell even as he was predicting a bidding war over AT&T;’s cable group.

In Sun Valley, Idaho, at the Allen & Co. media conference, Malone predicted that AT&T;’s shares were about to get more valuable.

“I expect that AT&T; will be seeing alternative proposals and improved proposals,” Malone told a Bloomberg News reporter in Idaho. He said other cable operators, including AOL Time Warner Inc. and Paul Allen, who controls Charter Communications Inc., were likely to jump into the bidding.

Malone has lost more than $1 billion on paper in AT&T; as the company’s shares plunged to below $20 a share from $60 two years ago. Malone became the largest individual shareholder when he sold his controlling stake in Tele-Communications Inc. to AT&T; in 1999.

He resigned from the AT&T; board because he was excluded from deliberations involving the Comcast deal.