8.global/LK1st/mark2nd

No. 8

Global Crossing Goes Public

When it comes to big deals in 1998, they don’t get much bigger or more ambitious than Global Crossing Ltd.

In August, the company, which is incorporated in Bermuda but controlled by L.A. investor Gary Winnick, raised $400 million in an initial public offering. Since then, the stock has more than doubled in price, to about $47 last week. That puts total market capitalization at nearly $9 billion. The IPO came on the heels of an $800 million bond offering by Global Crossing earlier in the year.

Then in December, the firm quietly raised an additional $500 million in a private placement of preferred stock, and then another $500 million in non-investment-grade debt.

What has captured the imagination of many investors is the sheer scope and ambition of Global Crossing’s business plan. The company is in the process of laying tens of thousands of miles of high-capacity fiber-optic cables across the world’s sea beds. It will then sell space on those lines to telecommunications firms that are desperate for more capacity to handle the growing demand for digital and Internet-related communications.

Already, the company has completed links across the Atlantic and is in the process of laying cable in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Jason Booth