I just finished an interesting book entitled: Optical Illusions: Lucent and the Crash of Telecom. It was written to trace one company's rise and fall through the telecom boom and bust between 1997 and 2002 or so. "No industry looked more promising or bled more money than telecommunications. With the collapse in market capitalization of more than $4 trillion and job losses in excess of 500,000 between 1999 and 2002, the telecom meltdown ranks as the greatest stock market debacle ever." (pg. 5) (Note that this book was written in 2004.) The story of Lucent is indeed an amazing one. Here are some tidbits taken from this book: the company's stock went from $5.70 per share to $59.36 and back to $5.70 in 5 years in split adjusted numbers (pg. 247). It hit .55 per share in 2003. The company bought a huge (92 million sq. ft.) manufacturing plant when it spun out of AT&T for about 45 million in 1996. It then invested 300 million into the plant to make it state of the art in in 2000. That same plant was shuttered and eventually sold for 13.8 million in September of 2003 (pg. 260-65). But one of the larger lessons for those of us in the restructuring/bankruptcy business is that businesses should watch (just like investors) for a bubble, the unrestrained euphoria in one sector of the economy and if they are in that particular sector, the decision to forgo some "profit" today in order to prepare defensively for a downturn may save the company in the long run, despite the resulting bad press/mad shareholders. To be fair, in the case of the telecom bubble, most savvy investors did not think it was a bubble until it had already burst. The book well explains that even Alan Greenspan, the trusted Chairman of the Federal Reserve thought that telecommunications as an industry in the year 2000, was on solid footing and needed no particular attention (pg. 186). The Wall Street Journal wrote on the last day of 1999 that "the business cycle -- a creation of the Industrial Age -- may well become an anachronism." (as quoted on pg. 186). However, this was certainly not the case. So, while the leaders of the markets may not have seen it coming, as set out in the book, there were many signs at least visible within the company which pointed toward the disaster to come. And what a disaster it was, not only for Lucent but for the entire telecom industry, including shareholders and employees. Here is a link to the book, should you wish to purchase it: http://www.amazon.com/Optical-Illusions-Lucent-Crash-Telecom/dp/0743226674/sr=8-1/qid=1166557486/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3626189-4447211?ie=UTF8&s=books Mike