October 13 in business history: a licence won by lottery, a loan that never arrived, and the rights given up to close

Three 13 Octobers turned on an answer from somebody who did not work for the company: a licence a regulator gave away, a loan a bank syndicate would not fund, and the rights handed over to get a deal approved.

On Thursday 13 October 1983, Ameritech Mobile Communications switched on the first commercial cellular telephone service in the United States, in Chicago 1. AT&T's own history of the day names David Meilahn as the network's first customer 2.

Ameritech expected 5,000 customers in Chicago by the end of 1983 and 12,000 within a year. A phone cost about $3,000 to buy and install, and service ran $50 to $150 a month 1.

The company's president, Bob Barnett, told a news conference that cellular service would "revolutionize the communications industry" and that he expected a $2.8 billion market in cellular phones by the end of the century. He put Detroit, Milwaukee and Cincinnati next, in 1984 1.

The right to sell that service came from the Federal Communications Commission. In April 1981 the commission set aside half the cellular spectrum in each market for the local telephone company and licensed a second, competing carrier beside it. Ameritech held the Chicago slot by right 3.

The second slot went to a lottery. The commission proposed that on 6 October 1983 by a 4–0 vote, because more than 900 applicants were competing for the markets ranked 31 to 60 and hearings would have taken years to clear them. The FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, said smaller markets might otherwise wait until 1990 3.

Decision mirror: The FCC now sells the access it once drew from a hat. Auction 107, which ran from 8 December 2020 to 17 February 2021, sold 280 megahertz of C-band spectrum for gross bids of $81,168,677,645; 21 bidders won licences out of 57 qualified 4. A lottery picks by chance; an auction picks by capital.

On Friday 13 October 1989, a group led by United Airlines' pilots and by UAL's chairman, Stephen M. Wolf, said it could not raise the money for its $6.75 billion, $300-a-share purchase of UAL, the parent of United 5.

That price would have handed employees 75 per cent of the airline, senior managers 10 per cent, and British Airways 15 per cent for $750 million. The two lead banks, Citibank and Chase Manhattan, had together pledged $3 billion and were trying to place $4.2 billion more 5.

Bankers Trust and Security Pacific declined to join, and Japanese banks that had backed the buyout of Northwest Airlines held back. United's machinists, its largest union, opposed the transaction and said the debt load would be excessive 5.

The market answered the same afternoon. UAL shares fell $5.50 to $279.50 before the New York Stock Exchange halted trading 5. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 190.58 points, or 6.91 per cent, to 2,569.26, its largest point decline since October 1987 and the twelfth-worst percentage fall on record 6.

Nearly $200 billion of paper value vanished on more than 250 million shares, over 100 million of them in the final hour. The deal had leaned on junk-bond financing, and lenders were already retreating from that market 56.

The group finished $2 billion short. Its tender offer expired at midnight on 26 October, UAL's directors voted against continuing the sale, and Wolf withdrew from the buyout 7. UAL stock closed at $171 on 27 October, down from a high of $294 7.

Decision mirror: Seven banks ran the same risk in 2022, when lenders led by Morgan Stanley put up about $13 billion against Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter. The debt stayed on their books for two and a half years because buyers would not take it at the banks' price, and holding it tied up capital the banks could have used on other deals 8. The banks sold $1 billion in January 2025 at about 95 cents on the dollar, $5.5 billion in February at 98 cents, and $4.7 billion at par, then placed the last $1.2 billion on 28 April 2025 at roughly 98 cents 8.

Microsoft completed its $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard on 13 October 2023, after the Competition and Markets Authority cleared a narrower version of the deal the same day 9.

The UK regulator had blocked the original transaction in April 2023 over cloud gaming. In August, Microsoft conceded that Ubisoft, rather than Microsoft, would buy the cloud streaming rights outside the European Economic Area for every Activision PC and console game produced over the next 15 years 10.

The CMA opened a new investigation and cleared the restructured deal on 13 October. Its chief executive, Sarah Cardell, said Microsoft "had the chance to restructure during our initial investigation but instead continued to insist on a package of measures that we told them simply wouldn't work" 10.

Decision mirror: For the quarter ended 30 June 2026, Xbox content and services revenue fell 10 per cent, and Microsoft counted "severance expense and impairment charges in XBOX" among the items that partly offset a $3.2 billion gain on its Anthropic investment; Azure passed $100 billion of annual revenue in that year 11. The Federal Trade Commission dismissed its case against the purchase on 22 May 2025, nineteen months after it closed 12.