Communications Corporation of America history

After a brief stint in government service, Price was an investment banker in the Wall Street firms of Dreyfus Corp., where he founded his own mutual fund, Price Capital, and—beginning in 1972—Lazard Freres & Co., where he became a general partner.

1981: Price Communications enters the broadcasting field, seeking undervalued properties.

After making its initial public offering of stock in 1982, Price's first acquisition, in November 1982 for $6 million, was WOWO-AM, a radio station in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Price Communications lost $643,556 on net revenue of $5.16 million in 1983, its first full year of operation.

Meanwhile, NBC had divested itself of one of its two networks (the “Blue” network), and this became the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). General Electric Company acquired RCA in 1986 for more than $6,000,000,000 in what was the largest non-oil company merger up to that time.

After the brief but severe stock market crash of October 1987, short sellers gravitated to Price Communications like a flock of vultures, whom Price attempted to forestall by repurchases of company stock.

With the United States economy in recession, Price in October 1990 proposed a restructuring of its $283 million in outstanding junk-bond debt that would give the holders most of the equity in the company.

In August 1995 Price Communications sold its three prior television stations for a total of $42 million.

When the company was sold to American Cellular Corp. in 1998 for a total of about $1.4 billion in cash and the assumption of debt, Price family members owned about 15 percent of the stock.

The long-term debt was $700 million at the end of 2000.

Price Communications was planning to sell this company to Verizon Wireless, Inc., the largest mobile-phone and paging company in the United States. Its primary holding in 2001 was Price Communications Wireless, Inc., which was engaged in the construction, development, management, and operation of cellular telephone systems serving more than 500,000 subscribers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.