The billionaire shell game

by L. J. Davis

In 1992, John Malone, the brilliant, hard-nosed, and widely feared CEO of cable giant TCI, announced that the 500-channel information superhighway was imminent, and he was going to build it. Companies by the hundreds, investors by the millions, politicians of all stripes, rushed to embrace this marvel of the age, this technology that would change our lives and make the savvy and the quick rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Trouble was, John Malone's interest in building the 500-channel information superhighway was largely rhetorical. He was much more interested in selling his debt-ridden company, with its notorious reputation for wretched customer service, to Ray Smith at Bell Atlantic - in what would be the largest merger in United States history. But sometimes bluffs - even $33 billion bluffs - get out of hand. The Billionaire Shell Game follows the best and the brightest of the information age - people like Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin, Wired guru Nicholas Negroponte, media mogul Ba