So if career survival is any guide, Viacom's pragmatic approach appears to have been the right bet. "Convergence may be the most expensive word in history, said David Geffen, the prolific entrepreneur who is co-founder of DreamWorks, the movie studio, with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
"We're betting on convergence, but we're not looking at it as a bet.
However, the evidence that customers actually want to buy all their telecoms services from a single provider is surprisingly scant, says James Barford of Enders Analysis, a market-research firm.Whoever is right, operators have been betting on convergence.
But evidence that there is much demand for such an offering is scant, says James Barford of Enders Analysis, a market-research firm.Whoever is right, operators have been betting on convergence.
"The basic bet is that convergence is going to happen, and it's not just about the TV," he said in a recent telephone interview.
"GGV defined the concept of a U.S./China venture capital firm," said Tim Recker, managing director of University of California Regents, an existing GGV LP participating again in Fund V. "We bet on the convergence of these 2 markets, and started planting the seeds a little earlier than most," said Richards in an interview.
Punters betting on speedy convergence may have jumped the gun.
The service-provider spending was especially welcome news for Cisco, which has bet heavily that the convergence of voice and data networks would translate into higher sales for its most advanced products.
Basically, the new fund, like Long-Term Capital, makes sophisticated bets mostly on the convergence of the yields of similar bonds around the globe.
But unlike Bertelsmann under Mr. Middelhoff, Vivendi Universal under Jean-Marie Messier or AOL Time Warner under Gerald M. Levin and Robert W. Pittman, Viacom did not bet its corporate ranch on convergence -- the marriage of old-line media assets with Internet-age technology.
When S.& P. first lowered the rating more than five years ago, it seemed to us that investors had bet overwhelmingly at euro-zone convergence, pushing the risk premium on Greek government bonds to all-time lows.
