As BCE Inc. tries to reinvent itself, the company has now shifted its attention to the executive suites. Gone is Pierre Blouin, who headed up the consumer business since May 2003. It's an interesting move given the business had a good second-quarter after struggling for some time. With Blouin out of the picture, Kevin Crull moves up the corporate ladder to become president of residential services, which looks like Blouin's old job but with a new title. Crull, who spent five years at AT&T before joining BCE earlier this year, may be in the running to eventually replace CEO Michael Sabia. Another executive with a shot at becoming Sabia's successor is Robert Odendaal, who has been named president of Bell Mobility and Bell Distribution Inc. Odendaal, a former BSkyB executive, was running BCE ExpressVu and took on the top spot at Bell Mobility when Michael Neumann quit earlier this year. If the overhaul of BCE's senior management team is an indication the board and/or shareholders weren't happy with how the company was being run, a question that begs to be asked is how long does Sabia have at the helm. With a stock price that has not budged since he took over in early-2002 (granted, it has been difficult sailing in the telecom industry), when does the spotlight turn to Sabia's performance. My take is the board seems content - at least for the time being - with how Sabia has restructured operations and reduced costs. The big challenge, however, will be to see if Sabia has the ability to move beyond "blocking and tackling" to create a growth strategy/vision for BCE. It appears investors are getting restless with growing suggestions BCE shed its BellGlobemedia assets (CTV, The Globe & Mail, TSN) and/or convert Bell Canada into an income trust. In a year, it would not surprise me to see Sabia overseeing a dramatically different company or no longer with BCE. There is simply no way BCE can remain the same beast.

I had to shake my head this morning after reading a New York Times story on how VCs appear to be stumbling over each other to invest in dot-com firms again. The story cited Accel Partners' $12.2 million investment in Facebook.com, a social networking outfit focused on college students. (Haven't we gone through the social networking investment craze already and discovered there isn't a compelling business model?) The VCs justify these kind of investments because they are quality opportunities even though there's plenty of risk. Hey, this sounds a lot like what they were saying six, seven years ago! One thing I've learned from 15 years of business journalism is most investors who do well are a lot less smart than we give them credit for, and investors who make bad decisions tend to have short-term memories. The new wave of interest in dot-com companies has much to the fact investors are optimistic again about the Internet's potential - fueled, in part, by the success of Google shares since its IPO last year. As a result, investors are more willing to accept risk than they were just two or three years ago when dot-com investments were brushed aside as investors licked their wounds and VCs retreated to "tend" their portfolios. It means there will likely be be a mini-dot-com boom as investors race to make sure they catch the next wave. Unfortunately, the bubble will likely burst again as people pay for their irrational exurberance.

Completely off topic but how is it we can send men to the moon and create a global communications systems that provides all the information we could ever want to know - yet there are tens of thousands of people in Louisiana still desperately waiting for help? It has been five days since Katrina but people still lacking basics such as food, water and shelter. If foreign journalists can roam through the streets of New Orleans, where's the U.S. Army or the National Guard? When order does return to Louisiana, it will be heartening to see organizations such as the Red Cross start do help people.