On the face of it, the idea that Eircom might once again list on the stock market seems ridiculous. In recent months, it has appointed a clatter of corporate advisers to advise it on its strategic options. Top of the list appears to be flotation, with reports it is planning a dual listing in Dublin and London in September with a view to raising €1 billion, which would be used to pay down its debt.

Just two years ago Eircom was banjaxed financially after Singapore-based investment group STT decided there were greener fields to plough elsewhere and walked away from its modest equity investment to leave the company’s bondholders, who were owed €4.08 billion, to decide its fate.

Biggest examinership

Eircom required the support of the High Court to protect it from its creditors in what was the biggest examinership in the history of the State.

In March 2012, on appointing an interim examiner, Justice Peter Kelly said the telco was insolvent in a "very substantial way". The judge said Eircom's history since its privatisation in 1999 "made for sad reading for this State and its citizens".

“Over the following years, the company changed hands on a regular basis. One could be forgiven for thinking that it became the subject of a game of corporate ‘pass the parcel’. But this was a game with a difference. On each occasion that it was played, the players won (on occasions handsomely) and it was the parcel, namely the company, that lost,” the judge added.

Eircom became something of a pyramid scheme for investors with the result that its later owners, Babcock & Brown and, to a lesser extent STT, got burned.

Arguably, the biggest loser in the pass-the-parcel game was the customer. There’s a myth that Eircom was a great company until the State sold it to greedy private investors. That’s nonsense. In State hands Eircom was a bloated, inefficient monopolist.

After privatisation, it was starved of investment and customers suffered poor quality phone and broadband services. It was run for the benefit of staff more than the consumer. I know this because so many current and former workers have told me.

Eircom employees earned €940 million tax-free over a number of years from the privatisation and held one-third of the equity of the business before it collapsed into examinership. They had a big say in how it was run and their representatives on the board must share the blame for the mess.

Bouncing back

Like sport, business moves at such a pace companies can fail spectacularly but bounce back a few years later. Bank of Ireland could have gone out of business in 2008 but is now back in profit and generating capital, and music retailer HMV has gained a new lease of life under new owners.

If Eircom were a football team, it would probably be Liverpool. Its heyday was 20 years ago and it's been overtaken by a number of foreign-owned rivals with deep pockets (for Chelsea and Manchester City read Vodafone and UPC). But the company still thinks of itself as the top dog in the market.

Like Liverpool, Eircom needs a Brendan Rogers to breath some new life into the company and put the competition on the back foot and regain lost pride.

Lots of noise

Is Eircom chief executive Herb Hribar that man? For sure, the American has sought to bring some momentum to the business. There's been lots of noise around its investment in e-fibre (about €600 million spent over the past 18 months), Meteor's 4G mobile services, and the launch of television services, making it the first player in the Irish market to offer quad play (landline, mobile, broadband and TV).

And he’s sought to trim fat from its cost base, with the headcount being cut by 2,000 over two years without a day lost to industrial action.

But there's a view in the industry that the e-fibre investment lacks substance. Meteor is now a distant number three in the mobile market to Vodafone and the soon-to-be-merged Three/02, which in turn has agreed to facilitate the establishment of two additional mobile virtual network operators (UPC and Carphone Warehouse).

You’d have to imagine that the fixed-line business is in terminal decline. And do you know anyone with Eircom’s TV service?

There are some who believe the talk of an IPO was designed to flush out a trade or private equity buyer. Cross border acquisitions by trade buyers are thin on the ground in Europe although there’s plenty of private equity chasing deals in Ireland.

What seems clear is that any funds raised will be used to pay down its near €2 billion debt rather than invested in the business. This will simplify its capital structure and presumably save millions each year in interest costs (it paid €167 million in interest in the nine months to the end of March) but it won’t provide the injection of funding that a cash-hungry business like Eircom needs in a world where it’s hard to keep up with technological advances.

Regardless of that, bringing news owners into the fold could be good for Eircom.

After years of being passed around like a parcel, Eircom needs shareholders willing to take a long-term view to unlock its potential, rather than chasing a quick buck.

If only there were an Irish telecoms billionaire with a track record in building businesses from scratch and the vision to push new technologies, who could step into the breach.