NEW YORK-AT&T Corp. is seeking permission to make a secondary offering of 35.9 million shares of AT&T stock owned by BT plc.
If the move is approved by the securities and Exchange Commission, it could be the largest secondary offering in U.S. history.
BT, or British Telecommunications, originally purchased a 22 percent stake in McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. in 1989 and 1990. When McCaw was purchased in September by AT&T, the shares were converted one-for-one into AT&T stock.
Sale of the former McCaw stock could bring BT as much as $1.75 billion, reflecting a profit of nearly $240 million. BT invested $4.3 billion in MCI Communications Corp., a long distance telephone service competitor of AT&T.