
DATE: Sunday, August 31, 1997               TAG: 9708300963

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  153 lines

BELL LEADER HAS TOUCH AND TONE DESIGNATED CHAIRMAN AND CEO STARTED BELOW THE GROUND FLOOR.

Next year, Ivan Seidenberg will likely become one of the country's most powerful men. Chairman and CEO of Bell Atlantic Corp., a $29 billion telecommunications giant. Offspring of the mega merger between Bell Atlantic and NYNEX. One of the country's 25 biggest companies.

But Seidenberg has had little trouble the past couple of weeks meeting and mixing with ground-level workers. That's because he used to be one.

Seidenberg got his start with the phone company 31 years ago below ground level: as a splicer's helper, descending into New York City manholes, stringing phone cables.

His expected ascent next December to the chairman's seat at Bell Atlantic would mark the culmination of his climb up one of the tallest corporate ladders in history.

Right now, he's got one more boss to placate. Raymond Smith, the current Bell Atlantic Chairman and CEO with a reputation for toughness and liking things done Ray Smith's way.

Smith is scheduled to turn the whole operation over to Seidenberg late next year. Media speculated after Bell Atlantic and NYNEX Corp. completed their $25.6 billion merger last month that Smith may be wavering.

Maybe Smith wants to run the company a little longer. Maybe Seidenberg, 50, won't run the show like Smith had thought. Maybe Smith will shove Seidenberg out, like AT&T's Robert Allen pushed out would-be successor John Walter.

Seidenberg, now president and vice chairman of Bell Atlantic, taps his dry humor to defuse questions about how he meshes with Smith.

``My management style is exactly like Ray Smith's,'' Seidenberg said Monday during an interview in Richmond, a wry grin the only clue on his deadpan face. ``I do exactly what he says, when he wants it, on his schedule.''

Soon, Seidenberg will be setting the schedule for the new Bell Atlantic. As CEO of NYNEX, the Baby Bell serving New York and New England, Seidenberg sold the merger to that company's board and shareholders.

He became vice chairman and chief operating officer of the new company. Seidenberg terms speculation that he won't take over the top job ``idle chitter chatter.'' Wall Street gossip. His barometer: he's met 5,000 Bell Atlantic employees during the past couple of weeks, and not one has asked him about it.

``Look, I work for the chairman of Bell Atlantic, so I'm a visible person, so it's OK,'' he says in a no-nonsense manner, with a voice colleagues call soothing. ``That's the price you pay for getting this merger done.''

Seidenberg's job now is to integrate NYNEX into the new Bell Atlantic. No small task. The company's local phone market stretches from Maine to Virginia, its wireless market to Georgia.

It has 39 million access lines, nearly half a million in Hampton Roads. Estimated revenues top $29 billion. It employs more than 141,000, 10,000 in Virginia, 1,500 in Hampton Roads. It serves seven of the country's 10 largest metropolitan areas.

Seidenberg will have to lead the charge to persuade federal regulators to let Bell Atlantic sell long-distance on its home turf, something it has been barred from doing since the 1984 court-ordered breakup of AT&T. He'll have to battle AT&T, MCI and Sprint for long-distance business.

And he'll have to set the tone with employees, the majority of whom are represented by the Communications Workers of America union. That contract expires next year.

But Seidenberg has the touch, associates say.

``I know this is going to sound a little strange,'' says Mortimer Zuckerman, publishing magnate and chairman of Boston Properties Inc., where Seidenberg is a board member, ``but he has one of the most soothing voices. `Sure, whatever you want, Ivan. You want my wallet? You want my child? You want my wife?' ''

Seidenberg has a way of speaking that makes a listener pay attention. He speaks steadily, deliberately, pausing before key words. Hesitating. Making the listener want that next word.

``Ivan uses that - he does speak softly and slowly,'' says Thomas E. Dooley, deputy chairman of Viacom Inc., another board Seidenberg sits on. ``I think that's because he thinks very carefully about what he's going to say.''

While explaining Federal Communications Commission regulations or fiber optic networks, Seidenberg melds wisdom from baseball legend Casey Stengel, employees he's spoken with, or his two children.

``When I was at NYNEX? What's that?'' Seidenberg says to one question. ``My kids have a saying: Nostalgia is for losers.''

At board meetings, Seidenberg has a knack for asking tough questions without putting someone on the defensive, Zuckerman says. Seidenberg is straightforward, has ``that radar'' that zooms in on potential management problems and raises issues in ``an extraordinarily non-confrontational way.''

``He asks it in a way . . . no bullshit, no pretense, you just want to please that Bing Crosby voice,'' Zuckerman says.

Seidenberg got his start with the phone company when he mentioned to a friend that he wanted to put himself through college. He was told to apply at the New York phone company and the utility companies, because they cover educational expenses. He did and landed at the phone company.

Joe McAleer, vice president of Communications Workers of America local 1101 in Manhattan, worked with Seidenberg when he was a splicer's helper. Seidenberg is a ``decent guy who hasn't changed much,'' McAleer says. He still stops by occasionally to have lunch with his old work crew.

``I'd say he's a fair guy,'' McAleer says. ``He doesn't start crying everytime you moan to him. He's not a brutal guy. He's not a pansy.''

Seidenberg may have a tough job bringing together the old NYNEX and Bell Atlantic cultures, McAleer says. Particularly the unions. The NYNEX unions have traditionally pushed the company more and dug in deeper in negotiations than Bell Atlantic's, he says.

``We have our ideas,'' McAleer says. ``Don't think we're going to start doing things Bell Atlantic's way, because we're not.''

Competition, more than anything, drives unions and management to work together, Seidenberg says. That's what drove him at NYNEX to negotiate union agreements ahead of schedule - it frees the company and the workers to focus on the business.

Seidenberg has been traveling throughout Bell Atlantic's southern region the past couple of weeks to meet with employees and hear their concerns. Since the majority of the company's workers are unionized, he equates employee concerns with union concerns.

He'll have a chance to test his theory next year when the union's contract expires.

``You know it's funny, on this issue it's pretty simple,'' Seidenberg says. ``Employees, all they care about, are we giving them the resources to serve the customer and to grow the business, and if they do a good job will they have a job.''

The answer is yes, he says. Bell Atlantic will grow ``on the backs'' of its long-distance competitors.

Bell Atlantic aims next year to enter the long-distance market in its home territory. Its intent: in five years, snatch $5 billion of the $20 billion spent.

The Baby Bells, like Bell Atlantic, and long-distance carriers AT&T, MCI and Sprint have been have been accusing each other of stonewalling by refusing to sign deals to compete in each others' markets. Consumer groups and others have said the stonewalling and finger pointing demonstrate that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has not delivered the competition it promised.

That's not so, Seidenberg says. Look at the 1984 AT&T breakup: it took five years until AT&T started losing big chunks of its long-distance market. The business market is already highly competitive, he says, and the consumer market will really begin rolling in the next couple of years.

The long-distance companies have used the telecom act as an excuse after they miscalculated how expensive it is to enter the local phone markets, Seidenberg says. Criticism of the Bells is ``a crock.''

``I think the long-distance companies are falling on their faces,'' he says, sternly but calmly. ``They act like we've been standing on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean keeping them from landing.

``Tell me this, I'll ask a rhetorical question. . . ''

The listener waits.

``Has MCI been more focused on selling itself to British Telecom than trying to get into the market in New York?''

Seidenberg pauses.

``I think so.'' ILLUSTRATION: TING-LI WANG color photos/The Virginian-Pilot

Ivan Seidenberg got his start...

Seidenberg is animated...

Graphic

IVAN SEIDENBERG

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm] KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY BELL ATLANTIC