It was the year 1998 and Apple wasn’t at its best. A series of bad decisions, conflicting egos, the forced departure of Steve Jobs and a path that hadn’t been there for a long time, nor had it been foreseen, made the company fall into an unsustainable situation. Jobs was already back. It had been two years, but a dead man like that does not rise in those days, and as the saying goes, Roma non uno die aedificata est (Rome was not built in a day).
Market capitalizations were not then the same as today, but Apple was around 5,000 million dollars, 60 times less than today, and things weren’t going well. It was then that Telecom Italia, the leader in this Europe of telephone operators of the 90s, appeared and tried to integrate it into its already extensive portfolio of companies, but it was not possible, and today it is close to bankruptcy.
To buy to be bought
Telecom Italia is the result of a series of subsequent mergers and privatizations of, among others, the Società Italiana per l’Esercizio Telefonico, which at that time they had a monopoly on communications. Its entry into the market is unprecedented, obtaining nearly 50% market share and expanding to countries such as Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and Greece. It became the sixth largest company in the world in its sector, and it was then that its CEO, Gian Mario Rossignolo, had the idea of taking over Apple, which was in off-peak hours.
The company even organized a trip with all its staff to meet Steve Jobs at the mythical 1, Infinite Loop — Apple Park didn’t exist at the time — and they did. Upon arriving, they knocked on Jobs’ office door, told him they wanted to buy his company, and he told them no, that they could go back to where they had been and that he already had a deal with another company. Apple was never sold, so it looks like it it was just a bluff to get them off my back
Now back to the year 2023. To say the tables have been turned would be an understatement. Very short. Apple is the most valuable company in the world and in history, and given that it recently surpassed three trillion dollars in market capitalization, it doesn’t look like it will stop being that way in the short term. Things didn’t go so well for Telecom Italia. They have a debt of 30 billion
even now They are negotiating the sale of their entire fixed telephone network to an American investment fund, and which Bloomberg values at 23,000 million, although the Italians say they will not accept less than 30. Of course, the fortunes of this company would have been different if it had bought Apple, but some trains only pass once, and who knows, maybe if this purchase had taken place, today we would not even know who Steve Jobs was, neither the iPhone would have existed, nor would we write- I these lines. Of course, that wouldn’t be ruled out.
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