Adelphia Case
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Adelphia Comes Clean
Can Vanessa Wittman help bring scandal-wracked Adelphia out of bankruptcy -- and back into investors' good graces?
Joseph McCafferty, CFO Magazine
December 1, 2003
When Vanessa Wittman came to Adelphia Communications Corp. as CFO last March, the cable-television giant was in danger of being disconnected. A victim of alleged fraud and plundering by its controlling shareholders, the Rigas family, Adelphia had been mired in Chapter 11 bankruptcy since June 2002. Even after seven months, an interim management team had failed to improve the company's poor performance, and now a new CEO was assembling a new team. At one point, liquidation had been a distinct possibility—the fifth-largest cable company in the nation, after all, had billions of dollars in assets that could be sold off.
"There was a lot of anxiety about whether the business was fixable or not," says Wittman. Yet the decision was made to salvage the company—clean up the toxic remnants of fraud and get Adelphia back in the good graces of customers, investors, and even employees, who had been demoralized by the scandal. And Wittman, who had just finished guiding Vancouver-based broadband provider 360networks Corp. out of bankruptcy, was tapped to help lead the effort.
At first she was surprised—and then relieved—at how little the finance rank and file really knew about what may be one of the largest frauds in corporate history. Instead of a corrupt environment, full of people who had winked or looked the other way, Wittman found a staff more or less in shock over what had transpired. "There was no culture of greed," she says, and thus no need for a wholesale purging of the ranks. Indeed, Wittman recalls making a jesting query to Adelphia CEO William Schleyer: "Where did you hide all the jerks?"
That sense of humor has helped Wittman maintain her balance while doing one of the toughest jobs in finance: cleaning up a scandal-plagued company (see "Sweeping Up," at...
Adelphia Comes Clean
Can Vanessa Wittman help bring scandal-wracked Adelphia out of bankruptcy -- and back into investors' good graces?
Joseph McCafferty, CFO Magazine
December 1, 2003
When Vanessa Wittman came to Adelphia Communications Corp. as CFO last March, the cable-television giant was in danger of being disconnected. A victim of alleged fraud and plundering by its controlling shareholders, the Rigas family, Adelphia had been mired in Chapter 11 bankruptcy since June 2002. Even after seven months, an interim management team had failed to improve the company's poor performance, and now a new CEO was assembling a new team. At one point, liquidation had been a distinct possibility—the fifth-largest cable company in the nation, after all, had billions of dollars in assets that could be sold off.
"There was a lot of anxiety about whether the business was fixable or not," says Wittman. Yet the decision was made to salvage the company—clean up the toxic remnants of fraud and get Adelphia back in the good graces of customers, investors, and even employees, who had been demoralized by the scandal. And Wittman, who had just finished guiding Vancouver-based broadband provider 360networks Corp. out of bankruptcy, was tapped to help lead the effort.
At first she was surprised—and then relieved—at how little the finance rank and file really knew about what may be one of the largest frauds in corporate history. Instead of a corrupt environment, full of people who had winked or looked the other way, Wittman found a staff more or less in shock over what had transpired. "There was no culture of greed," she says, and thus no need for a wholesale purging of the ranks. Indeed, Wittman recalls making a jesting query to Adelphia CEO William Schleyer: "Where did you hide all the jerks?"
That sense of humor has helped Wittman maintain her balance while doing one of the toughest jobs in finance: cleaning up a scandal-plagued company (see "Sweeping Up," at...