Comcast Drops AT&T Brand

Once the Comcast Corp.-AT&T Broadband merger closes (likely Monday), Comcast said the new company will be known as plain old Comcast Corp.

It dropped plans to call the behemoth MSO AT&T Comcast Corp.
In other merger news, AT&T Corp. selected the five directors it'll contribute to the Comcast board, and none of them, including incoming Comcast chairman C. Michael Armstrong, has cable experience.

AT&T's remaining four members are former Deloitte & Touche LLP CEO J. Michael Cook, former Eastman Kodak Co. CEO George Fisher, Geico CEO Louis Simpson and Sotheby's chairman Michael Sovern.

Comcast and AT&T jointly appointed Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) senior vice president Kenneth Bacon and University of Pennsylvania president Judith Rodin.

AT&T stock is expected to plummet after the AT&T Broadband unit is spun off, so the company declared a 1-for-5 reverse stock split Friday to pump up the value of the stock.