Richard McGinn

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He’s not a fallen star, but “a black hole,” as one source put it. “Where’d that money go?” Perhaps it disappeared into the coffee stain-shaped zero the company adopted as its logo. Just a few years after Lucent Technologies was spun off of AT&T, the telecom company was a darling of its industry, with share prices reaching $84.He’s not a fallen star, but “a black hole,” as one source put it. “Where’d that money go?” Perhaps it disappeared into the coffee stain-shaped zero the company adopted as its logo. Just a few years after Lucent Technologies was spun off of AT&T, the telecom company was a darling of its industry, with share prices reaching $84. Under McGinn’s unique brand of leadership, though, the most measurable thing the company did was overstate revenues, to the tune of $700 million in a single quarter in 2000. Two years later, its stock price hit bottom at 55 cents per share. While McGinn and the company became SEC targets, it’s been suggested he avoided getting a set of tailored pinstripes because so many telecom companies burst with the dot-com bubble in the early aughts. But most of those CEOs didn’t spend a reported $45 million building a golf course by company headquarters.

Next: Jim McGreevey