Qwest Deal Is One of CenturyTel Chief’s Riskiest Moves

By SPENCER E. ANTE And JOANN S. LUBLIN

Glen F. Post III just bagged his biggest duck.

The experienced hunter and little-known chief executive of CenturyTel Inc., a rural phone company based in Monroe, La., agreed Thursday to acquire Denver-based telecom giant Qwest Communications International Inc. in a $10.6 billion all-stock transaction.

The deal, one of the largest telecom acquisitions in years, will create the third-biggest U.S. provider of local phone service, with operations in 37 states, 17 million access lines and five million broadband customers.

The deal is also one of Mr. Post’s riskiest bets. While the combination will give CenturyTel greater potential to cut costs and to sell more lucrative services, such as television and long-distance data transport, it also expands the company’s footprint in the shrinking land-line business, which has been in an inexorable decline since the rise of the cellphone.

Jay Carrier/ Bloomberg News

Glen F. Post III

Mr. Post is also lashing his company to a bigger and more indebted enterprise. Standard & Poor’s said Thursday the deal would likely cost CenturyTel its investment-grade credit rating. Moody’s Investors Service disagreed, but said CenturyTel faces a big challenge integrating the companies and steering through the sector’s decline.

Mr. Post, a 57-year-old native of northeastern Louisiana, has been an unlikely but aggressive consolidator. He has built his small company into a national competitor by scooping up the assets of other rural phone providers, and in recent years by taking over bigger players.

The Qwest deal comes as his company is still digesting the $5.8 billion purchase of Embarq, Sprint Nextel Corp.’s former land-line business. The two deals will take CenturyTel from annual revenue of $2.6 billion to around $20 billion in less than two years.

Mr. Post isn’t a well-known figure on Wall Street or in the telecommunications industry. But friends and associates describe him as a soft-spoken leader who stays involved with the local community. The executive gave the keynote speech at the Monroe Chamber of Commerce’s annual banquet in February, and CenturyTel sponsors its teacher of the year award.

Mr. Post, born and raised in rural Union Parish, joined the local telecommunications company in 1976 and worked his way up, becoming chief executive in 1992 and taking over as chairman from founder Clarke M. Williams a decade later. The company had been given to Mr. Williams as a wedding gift by his parents in 1946, according to CenturyTel’s Web site. At the time, it had only 75 customers.

After taking the chairman’s post at CenturyTel in 2002, Mr. Post did a number of small acquisitions, expanding the company’s footprint throughout the rural communities in the South and Midwest. But he was aiming for bigger prey.

In 2008, as the credit crisis deepened, he announced the takeover of the larger Embarq. While many telecom companies were in financial distress, CenturyTel’s strong balance sheet enabled it to pull off the deal a year later. Dan Hesse, Sprint chief executive, says he got to know Mr. Post while the two served on the board of a telecom industry trade association in the 1990s. The group frequently discussed the industry’s need for consolidation and ways to alter the tax laws so bigger players could buy smaller ones. “As CEOs go, I would say he’s more understated but very knowledgeable,” Mr. Hesse says.

A banker who has worked with Mr. Post on deals calls him subtle and low key. “There’s no sharp elbow on the guy,” the banker says.

If the deal with Qwest is cleared by regulators, the combined company will be run by Mr. Post and based in Monroe, not Qwest’s hometown of Denver.

CenturyTel executives completely took over in the Embarq deal, one person familiar with the matter said, causing some Embarq executives to leave rather than relocate to Monroe. A CenturyTel spokeswoman strongly disagreed with that criticism. CenturyTel has nearly 20,000 staffers, and the majority “are former Embarq employees,” she said.

George Cummings, a banking executive in northeast Louisiana, got to know Mr. Post when he was still a rising star. The two men became friends as they climbed the corporate ranks, and from time to time they would go hunting for ducks, a popular pastime in the woodsy region.

“During the winter time, that is his passion,” says Mr. Cummings, the CEO of Progressive Bank in Monroe. “He’s an avid hunter. He knows how to work the ducks and call them in. He’s leading the hunt, and he’s a great shot.”