t (23 percent equity stake) in At Home in 1999, along with a controlling position (74 percent voting share). Other shareholders in At Home (Comcast and Cox in the United States, and Rogers and Shaw in Canada), however, retained veto rights on major strategic decisions (Hoover's Online, 2001b).
At the urging of AT&T, At Home acquired Excite.com in 1999 for $7.2 billion, as a part of a strategy to acquire both a portal service and more subscribers. In 1999, 2000, and the first-half of 2001, At Home both acquired and divested several other Internet firms. In 2000, the minority voting rights shareholders agreed to cede their veto rights to AT&T in return for the extension of distribution rights agreements. In 2001, the minority shareholders terminated their distribution agreements with At Home with an effective date of June 2002 (Hoover's Online, 2001b).
In the first-half of 2001, the advertising depression that hit the Internet portal industry segment placed severe financial pressures on Excite@Home. Employee layoffs, service curtailments, and other efforts implemented failed to return the company to financial stability. In September 2001, At Home agreed to sell its Internet assets to AT&T for $307, following which At Home Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (Hoover's Online, 2001b). The NASDAQ de-listed the At Home stock รน ticker symbol ATHMQ ("NASDAQ Delists Excite@Home, 2001).
Trading in the company's stock ceased on 23 October 2001 when the NASDAQ de-listed the stock. On the following day, however, At Home stock began trading on the OTC market (At Home Corporation, 2001a). The company has continued to sell assets, and, on 8 November 2001, the closing price for the company's stock on the OTC market was 7.7 cents (Wall Street City, 2001).
The industry in which Excite@Home participates is the Internet and Online Service Provider segment of the Telecommunications industry. Major competitors in the ...