The name is absent

mobile phoning at the end of 1999 and the first months of the year 2000 by looking
at the Vodafone-Mannesmann takeover (see below).

The third group of important actors in this fundamental boom and crash have been
the banks, especially the investment banks, the analysts^ the media people who
generated the public feeling of endless success and also the national state
governments who got large incomes by privatising their telecom companies and
selling licences for the UMTS-generation of mobile phones. It seems to be important
to note that economists and commentators believe that equity prices have remained
until today (May 2002) “extremely high” (Financial Times, 18^th of May, page 6).
Also the UMTS engagements are very risky (see Table 4).

The results of the hype constitute a disaster which can be studied in the following
table 3.

Table 3 European telecom companies under pressure (2000/2001)

1: year 2000; 2: business year 2000/01 (new figures are not available); 4: estimated
for 2001/02

Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10.5.02, page 22 (Judith Raupp)

Three weeks after the publication of this table Deutsch Telekom published a loss of
4,7 bill. Euro for 2001 at its AGM and forecast a 6 bill. loss for 2002. Vodafone
announced a 21.3 bill. Euro (!) loss before taxes. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 29./30.5.02,
p. 28), the largest loss in the economic history of Great Britain. Also the UMTS-
future of this sector does not look very confident.

Table 4 The start-up list for UMTS

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