The tightening of the global credit markets is crimping the world’s largest telecommunications company.
AT&T Inc chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said on Tuesday that his company was unable to sell any commercial paper last week for terms longer than overnight.
Commercial paper, which helps lubricate the flow of business operations, is a short-term IOU available to corporations that banks usually know are good for the money.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
It’s not that short-term borrowing is unreasonably expensive, Stephenson said.
A shortage of buyers for the debt means such borrowing is not as readily available as it had been even three weeks ago, he said.
“It’s loosened up a bit, but it’s day-to-day right now. I mean literally it’s day-to-day in terms of what our access to the capital markets looks like,” Stephenson said.
AT&T spokesman Larry Solomon said later that as of Tuesday, the company had ready access to the commercial paper market at reasonable rates and various terms.
But as a result of the recent volatility, managers at the Dallas-based phone company are more cautious.
“Your ability to plan for investment is obviously affected. You kind of don’t know what your cost of capital six months from now is going to be,” he said. “We’ll just be very guarded, cautious in terms of where we invest, very guarded and cautious in terms of hiring and capital spending. We’ll see where this situation goes.”
Separately, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said on Tuesday the global financial crisis would sap consumer and business spending, affecting all companies, including his own.
“Financial issues are going to affect both business spending and consumer spending, and particularly ... spending by the financial services industry,” Ballmer told reporters on the sidelines of a news conference in Oslo.
“We have a lot of business with the corporate sector as well as with the consumer sector and whatever happens economically will certainly effect itself on Microsoft,” he said.
“I think one has to anticipate that no company is immune to these issues,” he said, but declined to be more specific.
Wall Street analysts, on average, expect the Redmond, Washington-based company to generate an 8 percent rise in revenue to just under US$15 billion in its first-quarter ending last month.
“There are parts of our every business which are probably ‘safe’ in the sense that it’s not like our business would go to zero,” he said in an interview.
“On the other hand, when businesses have less money — they can borrow less money, they can spend less money — that can’t be good. When consumers feel the economic pinch, house prices come down. That can’t be good,” Ballmer said.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
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SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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