Stupid Corporate Decisions

[ixnay]

http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,47750,00.html

The 101 dumbest moments from this past year. Lots of good ones in there.

How the right merger can create exponential growth.

January 2002
One year after the completion of its much-ballyhooed merger, AOL Time Warner (AOL) posts a paltry quarterly loss of $1.8 billion.

April 2002
Just three months later, AOL Time Warner announces a loss of $54.2 billion, the biggest quarterly loss in U.S. history.

January 2003
Stunningly, a mere nine months after that -- and just two years after the consummation of the marriage -- AOL Time Warner sets another record with an annual loss of $98.7 billion.

[MRT144]

yeah, the Time Warner/AOL merger was pretty bad. synergies my ASS!

[Imran Siddiqui]

So what happens when people stop buying them? The Big Three can't be bothered to offer a decent product mix, and the end result is going to hurt them in the long run. They can't ride the gravy train forever.

You can make this claim for ANYTHING! What happens when people stop buying small **** Eurocars? What happens for McDonald's when people stop buying hamburgers?

Saying what happens when people stop buying them means nothing when there is no indication that people are going to stop buying them.

Not to mention the Firestone tires, constant safety recalls, etc, etc. The car companies never accounted for people hurtling down the highway at 90 mphs in these mini-tanks, and its biting them in the a$s....hard.

You have a REALLY wierd way of thinking abotu what bites companies in the ass. Even with Firestone, Ford has made an absolute ton on SUVs, as have every American car maker. It's a cash cow and it doesn't look like it's gonna end soon.

After all, it's saved many car companies (like Sten has already stated, Chrysler).

[GePap]

Circuit City decides to "improve customer service" by firing 5000 employees. Not only do they fire 5000, they fire the best 5000, those that used to earned the most on commisions from sales. they then stop paying commisions to their sales people.

[MRT144]

gepap, were you a circuit city sales rep?

[mactbone]

Sony doesn't license the Betamax, a product with superior performance over VHS, and ended up on the losing end of the tape standard war.

[JohnT]

Imran, Detroit, please chill. If you want to argue SUV's, go to a thread about SUV's.

Thanks!!

[Zero]

JohnT... Big&tasty isnt offered anymore. Sux for college student everywhere...

[Skanky Burns]

ATTP in an effort to cut costs, fired there highest-payed IT workers, complete with a nice payout bonus. They then realised that there was noone left in the company that understood the company's legacy systems. The very same workers were rehired as contractors, for the paltry sum of 3 times what they were previously receiving.

[Urban Ranger]

Skanky,

Good one.

Originally posted by Asher
How is that bigger?
IBM was already huge before that, still huge after.
The MS-DOS thing threw MS right to the top, and they've been there ever since.

Because if IBM used the 8086 instead, they wouldn't have gotten MS-DOS, they would have gone with CP/M-86, a more advanced OS at the time. MS would still be a computer languages vendor, but would not be as big.

[Jac de Molay]

You can make this claim for ANYTHING! What happens when people stop buying small **** Eurocars? What happens for McDonald's when people stop buying hamburgers?

If either company was dumb enough to offer only certain product while ignoring everything else, they probably deserve to die a slow death.

Car companies can't afford to put all their eggs in one basket in terms of product development. This is what killed them in the 70's when the Japanese undercut the big three after gas prices went through the roof.

You have a REALLY wierd way of thinking abotu what bites companies in the ass. Even with Firestone, Ford has made an absolute ton on SUVs, as have every American car maker.

Then why is ford's stock in the toilet, even with strong SUV's sales? GM and Chrysler are down, too. They're still getting killed across the board because they can't compete with the imports. And now the imports are cutting into their light truck and SUV markets.

fter all, it's saved many car companies (like Sten has already stated, Chrysler).

FYI, SUVs didn't "save" chrysler. A government handout "saved" chrysler. Followed by the K-car, followed by the Caravan.