In 1998, Apple wasn’t exactly at its best. The company, yes, is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Steve Jobs made a strong comeback after his adventure with NeXT, but doubts surrounded the legendary company, which still has a very affordable market value. So much so that there was even an operator who wanted to buy it.

Apple wasn’t worth much. Today, it is the most important company in the world with a market value exceeding 3 trillion dollars. However, at that time Apple was going through very difficult times, and although relevant, its market cap was much lower: its capitalization was about $ 5,000 million, a figure that put it on the target board of large companies.

When Telecom Italia became a giant. And just then, Telecom Italia was one of those companies: it was the sixth largest telecommunications operator in the world, with a market capitalization of nearly $100 billion. It also had very little debt, had stakes in several technology companies, and employed more than 120,000 people.

Idea. Marco Landi, who worked at Apple, was working for Telecom Italia in 1998. In his biography published in 2018, Landi described how the operator’s then-CEO, Gian Mario Rossignolo, organized a team that traveled to meet Steve Jobs at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino. The proposal was conceived by Francesco de Leo, who was the operator’s general manager at the time.

Mr. Jobs, we want to buy Apple. As noted in Fortune, Rossignolo would reveal in a later interview that the group had prepared a “detailed offer to buy Apple.”

Steve Jobs said no. According to Landi’s memoirs, Jobs turned down the offer, arguing that he already had a purchase agreement with another company. He didn’t mention which, but maybe it was just a bluff. The company even announced a surprising and controversial deal with Microsoft in August 1997 that invested $150 million in Steve Jobs’ company.

The rise and fall of Telecom Italia. Telecom Italia in trouble today. The operator has a huge gross debt of 30,000m euros, controls only one company outside its country of origin (the third operator in Brazil) and employs a third of the people who worked for it in 1998.

From buying (possibly) to buying. In fact, Telecom Italia needs to sell its fixed telephony network to salvage its dire economic situation, a first-of-its-kind deal for a European operator. The potential buyer is not a telecommunications group, but US investment firm KKR & Co.

operation is complicated. They state on Bloomberg that the buyout offer amounts to 23,000 million euros, but despite this, the acquisition faces many challenges, including opposition from the operator’s largest investor, the French group Vivendi SE, which has repeatedly stated that it will not accept any offer below $30,000 million.

Image | George Rex | Antoine Barres

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