DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: Next, we're going to go across the pond, as they say. Janet Guyon of "Fortune" magazine -- she is an editor there -- and joins me now from London where there is no trading today, but still news happening nonetheless. And, Janet, it concerns British Telecom, right?</s>JANET GUYON, EDITOR AT LARGE, "FORTUNE": Yes, there's a lot of reports. We think that this week that British Telecom will finally announce that $7 billion share offering that they want to make in order to reduce their debt. As you know, British Telecom has got a huge amount of debt -- $45 billion worth of debt on its balance sheet. They've been selling things off to try to reduce that. But they do need to meet a -- do need to do an equity offering to actually really reduce that. So we're looking for that this week. We're also looking for results for British Telecom. And there's also some reports that they may spin off their wireless business.</s>MARCHINI: The concern here, of course, being as goes British Telecom, so goes the rest of the business. Can everybody raise the cash that they need in order to bring down the debt that's really burdening the telecom sector right now?</s>GUYON: Well, it's going to be difficult, Deborah. We saw that rights issue from Vodafone last week. That went pretty well. But Vodafone is in the best shape of all the telecom companies. Everybody else has got huge debt on their balance sheets, and they're facing huge costs to roll out their third-generation wireless network. So there's pressure everywhere. A lot of these phone companies are putting pressure on their equipment suppliers to supply them with financing. So it really remains to be seen, particularly in these markets, how much equity any of these companies can actually float.</s>MARCHINI: Something else to worry about -- Janet Guyon, "Fortune" magazine, thanks so much for joining us. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
British Telecom Expected to Announce $7 Billion Share Offering This Week