Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Verizon Wireless closed its $28.1 billion deal to acquire Little Rock-based Alltel Corp. on Friday, completing a merger that creates the nation’s largest wireless carrier with more than 80 million customers.

The purchase price was $5.9 billion and New Jersey-based Verizon will take on $22.2 billion in Alltel’s debt.

Top Alltel executives, including CEO Scott Ford, COO Jeff Fox and CFO Sharilyn Gasaway, among others, left the company Friday, though job losses were expected to affect fewer than 100 employees immediately, most of them in senior leadership positions.

Alltel’s work force is 3,150 in Arkansas, 2,864 of whom are in the Little Rock area. Verizon said it would retain employees below the top management level as it assesses its needs under new management.

Verizon officials scheduled meetings with employees on Monday.

Addressing an audience in Little Rock in August, Verizon President and Chief Executive Lowell McAdam said it would take a year after closing the sale to assess employee retention.

Also Friday, Alltel Wireless trustee Steve Cannon announced a senior leadership team that will oversee operations of the 105 markets federal regulators required Verizon to as part of the Alltel acquisition until they are sold.

Cannon and the new Alltel management team said the competition in those markets would continue until the sale of all is complete.

The sales and operations effort for the divested markets will be led by Paul Bowersock, who joined Alltel in 1992 and most recently served as senior vice president of Channel Support.

“I am excited to begin working with Paul to make sure that our customers in these markets get the same great service they have come to expect with Alltel Wireless in the past,” Cannon said. “In the meantime, we are ready for competition and plan to offer the best wireless products, calling plans and customer service in the industry.”

Bowersock said no action is required by Alltel customers in the divested markets during the transition.

“Be assured nothing related to your service will change during the transition period, which will continue until these properties are purchased by another service provider,” he said. “As we move through this transition, we will share more information as it becomes available. In the meantime, you will continue to receive the same great service you have come to expect from Alltel.”

Verizon also announced that Steve Smith, vice president of transition planning for Verizon Wireless, has been named president of the company’s new south central region, effective at the close of the Alltel acquisition.

“This new region is reflective of the growth we will achieve with the acquisition of Alltel,” said Jim McGean, south area president. “I’m very excited about this new chapter in Verizon Wireless evolution and look forward to leveraging all that Alltel will bring to our growing business.”

Verizon disclosed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month company had received commitments from eight financial institutions to provide $17 billion in financing for the deal.

Verizon said it would complete a set of transactions Friday that would reduce its Alltel-incurred debt to third parties to $2.7 billion. Verizon said that sum will decline further to about $2.5 billion within the next 30 days. The company says it used cash and borrowing from credit facilities to buy Alltel and pay the debt it carried.

Verizon and Alltel officials announced the deal last June, just seven months after TPG Capital and GS Capital Partners acquired Alltel and took it private.

In August, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said during an appearance in Little Rock that the company would maintain a regional call center at Alltel’s Little Rock campus that eventually could employ up to 1,200, up from the 800 previously employed there.

“Will everyone have a job that’s there on that campus today? No,” McAdam said during his appearance last summer. “These mergers are built on synergies and the synergies involve eliminating redundancies.”

However, he said Alltel’s talented work force was one thing that made the acquisition attractive, and that he wanted to keep that talent within Verizon, although that could require employees to relocate.

U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., Gov. Mike Beebe and others have encouraged Verizon to locate other assets in the state.