David Dorman

This article is about the telecommunications executive. For the illustrator, see Dave Dorman.

David W. Dorman (born 1954) is an American Telecommunications executive and is currently the non-executive chairman of Motorola.[1][2]

In 2000, he took on the task of rebuilding AT&T, whose market capitalization had fallen from a high of $110 billion to a low of less than $11 billion. Prior to SBC Communications's acquisition of AT&T Corp. on 18 November 2005, Dorman was chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T.

Early life and education

Dorman was born in Georgia, and graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1975, with a bachelor's degree in industrial management.

Early career

He joined a company that was to become Sprint Communications in 1981, as employee number 55, and climbed to become President of Sprint Business - with 10,000 employees and revenues of $4.5Bn.

In 1994 and the age of 39, Dorman became youngest President and CEO of a BabyBell at Pacific Bell, a division of Pacific Telesis. The company was taken over by SBC Communications in 1997, and after being reassigned as Executive Vice President, Dorman resigned to join PointCast as CEO - an early news aggregation service. After PointCast failed, Dorman left to become Chief Executive Officer of Concert Communications Services, the joint venture between BT and AT&T.

Later career

After Concert failed, Dorman became President of AT&T with C. Michael Armstrong serving as CEO. At about this time, it was decided to breakup AT&T's 4 divisions (AT&T Wireless, AT&T Broadband, AT&T Consumer, and AT&T Business). AT&T Wireless was spun off to become Cingular in 2001. AT&T Broadband was sold to Comcast in 2002 - resulting in Chairman C Michael Armstrong leaving AT&T to run the new Comcast and Dorman became CEO and Chairman of AT&T.

With AT&T still under considerable debt because of the enormous costs of creating AT&T Broadband that did not all follow the division to Comcast, Dorman shed AT&T Consumer in order to negotiate a merger with BellSouth that would make him CEO after BellSouth CEO F. Duane Ackerman's planned retirement. However, the deal fell apart when, on 18 November 2005, SBC Communications purchased AT&T. Dorman served as President of the combined company for a short while. [3][4][5]

On April 10, 2014, Dorman was appointed to be an independent director on eBay's board of directors. [6]

References

  1. ↑ Light Reading - AT&T - Dorman Joins Moto's Board - Telecom News Wire
  2. ↑ Forbes - Motorola Board Elects Telecom-Vet Dorman
  3. ↑ http://sbc.merger-news.com/materials/am_senior_management.html
  4. ↑ "AT&T CEO Dorman to exit after merger".
  5. ↑ SBC Gains AT&T, But Not Its Chairman - E-business & Business Technology News by TechWeb
  6. ↑ So who blinked, Icahn or eBay? CEO's take on truce

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