Company of the Week

Bank of America

2006-10-02T08:19:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NYSE: BAC)

Founded

(as "Bank of America")
San Francisco, CA (1928)
(acquiring banks)
Charlotte, NC (1874)
Boston, MA (1784)

Headquarters Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

Key people

Ken Lewis, Chairman & CEO
Amy Brinkley, Global Risk Executive
Alvaro de Molina, CFO

Industry Money Center Banks

Products Banking

Revenue $83.980 billion USD (2005)

Operating income $42.877 billion USD (2005)

Net income $16.447 billion USD (2005)

Employees 176,638 (2005)

Website Bank Of America

Corporate History

NationsBank

See NationsBank for a history of that entity before the merger in 1998 with BankAmerica Corporation.

BankAmerica and the BankAmericard

Amadeo Giannini was the founder of the modern day Bank of America NT&SA. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake his Bank of Italy became a leader of the San Francisco banking community by providing loans to those struck by the disaster.

In the late 1920's, Giannini approached Orra E. Monnette, President and founder of the Los Angeles based Bank of America, Los Angeles about a potential merger between the two entities. The Los Angeles based bank exhibited strong growth throughout the 1920s, due in part to its success in developing an advanced bank branching system. The merger of the two institutions was completed in early 1929 and took the name Bank of America. The combined company was headed by Giannini with Monnette serving as co-Chair.3

While the names of many nationally chartered banks end with the initials 'N.A.' (National Association), Giannini picked a unique ending, National Trust and Savings Association, or 'NT&SA', because he wanted the name to highlight the different functions of the bank. BofA was the only NT&SA in the country. The bank was soon the largest in California.

Giannini also sought to build a national bank, expanding into most of the western states as well as into the insurance industry, under the aegis of his holding company, Transamerica Corporation. Bank of America NT&SA also had banking relationships in international financial markets. With the passage of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, banks were prohibited from owning non-banking subsidiaries such as insurance companies, and Bank of America and Transamerica were separated, with the latter company continuing in the insurance business. However, federal banking regulators prohibited Bank of America's interstate banking activity, and Bank of America's domestic banks outside of California were forced into a separate company that eventually became First Interstate Bancorp, which was acquired by Wells Fargo Corp. in 1996. It was not until the 1980s with a change in federal banking legislation and regulation that Bank of America was again able to expand its domestic consumer banking activity outside of California. California was the nation's fastest growing state during the post-World War II boom, with the highest use of checking accounts (partially driven by many soldiers being paid via bank accounts during WWII), resulting in BankAmerica being swamped by checks. By 1949, the branches had to close at 2:00pm in order to process the bookkeeping by 5:00 p.m. To cope with the transaction volume, the bank invested heavily in information technology and is generally credited, together with GE and SRI, with inventing modern centralized bank operations, along with a number of financial transaction processing technologies such as automatic check processing, account numbers, and Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR). Based upon these technologies, credit cards were able to be linked directly to individual bank accounts. Because of the efficiency of these technologies, the bank had significantly lower administrative costs than other banks and was able to expand until it became the world's largest bank in the early 1970s.

In 1959, it invented the bank credit card, the BankAmericard, which changed its name to VISA in 1977. A consortium of other California banks came up with Master Charge (now MasterCard) in order to compete with BankAmericard.

Expansion outside of California

Following passage of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1967, BankAmerica Corporation was established for the purpose of owning BankAmerica and its subsidiaries.

BankAmerica expanded outside California in 1983 with its acquisition of Seafirst Corporation of Seattle, Washington, and its wholly owned banking subsidiary, Seattle-First National Bank. Seafirst was at risk of seizure by the federal government after becoming insolvent due to a series of bad loans to the oil industry. BankAmerica continued to operate its new subsidiary as Seafirst rather than Bank of America until its 1998 merger with NationsBank.

BankAmerica was dealt huge losses in 1986 and 1987 due to the placement of a series of bad loans in the Third World, particularly in Latin America. The company fired its CEO, Sam Armacost, although Armacost blamed the problems on his predecessor, A.W. (Tom) Clausen, who was then appointed to replace Armacost. The losses resulted in a huge decline of BankAmerica stock, making it vulnerable to a hostile takeover.

First Interstate Bancorp of Los Angeles (which had originated from banks once owned by BofA), launched such a bid in the fall of 1986, although BankAmerica rebuffed it, mostly by selling its FinanceAmerica subsidiary to Chrysler and by selling the brokerage firm Charles Schwab and Co. back to Mr. Schwab. On the day of the 1987 stock market crash, BankAmerica was trading at $8 per share, although by 1992 it had rebounded mightily to become one of the biggest gainers of that half-decade. The selling of the corporate headquarters building in downtown San Francisco to raise capital was a symbolic blow to the bank.

BankAmerica's next big acquisition came in 1992. BankAmerica acquired its California rival, Security Pacific Corporation and its subsidiary Security Pacific National Bank in California and other banks in Arizona, Idaho, Oregon and Washington (which Security Pacific had acquired in a series of acquisitions in the late 1980s). This was, at the time, the biggest bank acquisition in history. Federal regulators nevertheless forced the sale of Security Pacific's Washington subsidiary, Rainier Bank, because the combination of Seafirst and Rainier would have given BankAmerica too large a share of the market in that state. Later that year, BankAmerica expanded into Nevada by acquiring Valley Bank of Nevada.

In 1994, BankAmerica acquired the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Co. of Chicago, which had become federally-owned as part of the same oil industry debacle that had brought down Seafirst. At the time, no bank had the resources to bail out Continental, so the federal government operated the bank for nearly a decade. Illinois at that time regulated branch banking extremely heavily, so Bank of America Illinois was a single-unit bank until the 21st century. Bank of America moved its national lending department to Chicago in an effort to establish a financial beachhead in the region.

These mergers helped BankAmerica Corporation once again become the largest U.S. bank holding company in terms of deposits, but the company fell to second place in 1997 behind fast-growing NationsBank Corporation and to third in 1998, also behind North Carolina's First Union Corp. In 1998, Bank Of America and NationsBank executed a merger-of-equal and changed the headquarter to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Bank of America Lawsuit aganist former Bank officers

The committee overseeing the liquidation of Bank Building and Equipment Corp. of America is seeking $23 million in actual damages and $23 million in punitive damages against three former officers of the defunct company.

The three defendants are Carl Weis Jr., the former chief executive; Myron Carpenter, the former chief financial officer, and Doug Clements, who ran the Loughman's division of BBC from 1987 until the parent company filed for bankruptcy protection in 1990.

The lawsuit alleges Clements perpetrated a massive financial fraud that "ultimately led to the demise of BBC."

The fraud not only caused the company to lose $8 million in contracts from unprofitable jobs, but also kept the otherwise profitable firm from earning $15 million, the suit said.

Merger of NationsBank and BankAmerica

The purchase of BankAmerica Corp. by NationsBank Corporation was the largest bank acquisition in history at that time. While the deal was technically a purchase of BankAmerica Corporation by NationsBank, with the renaming of the former entity to Bank of America Corporation, the deal was structured as a merger, and Bank of America NT&SA, changing its name to Bank of America, N.A. was the remaining legal bank entity. The bank still operates under Federal Charter 13044 which was granted to Giannini's Bank of Italy on March 1, 1927. Despite the mammoth size of the two companies, federal regulators insisted only upon the divestiture of 13 branches in New Mexico, in towns that would be left with only a single bank following the combination. This is because branch divestitures are only required if the combined company will have a larger than 25 percent FDIC deposit market share in a particular state or 10 percent deposit market share overall. Following the $64.8 billion acquisition of BankAmerica by NationsBank, the resulting Bank of America had combined assets of $570 billion, and 4,800 branches in 22 states.

In 2001, Bank of America CEO and chairman Hugh McColl stepped down and named Ken Lewis as his successor. Lewis's greater focus on financial discipline and efficiency contrasted greatly with the expansionary mergers and acquisition strategy of his predecessor.

In 2004, Bank of America purchased Louisville, Kentucky-based National Processing Company for $1.4 billion from National City Corp. The renamed company- BA Merchant Services- processes one in every six VISA and MasterCard transactions. The company also provides financial solutions for travel and healthcare companies. BA Merchant Services is headquartered in Louisville.

In 2004, Bank of America acquired Boston, Massachusetts-based FleetBoston Financial for $47 billion to solidify Bank of America's position as the bank with the largest FDIC-rated deposit market share in the United States with $513 billion in deposits, well ahead of the number two bank holding company, newly-merged JPMorgan Chase-Bank One with $353 billion in deposits and number three Wells Fargo & Co. with $228 billion (As of June 30, 2003).

Bank of America Today

On June 30, 2005 the bank announced it would purchase credit card giant MBNA for $35 billion in cash and stock. The Federal Reserve Board gave final approval to the merger between Bank of America and MBNA on December 15, 2005. The merger closed on 1 January 2006, and the completion of the deal solidifies the Bank's position as the largest issuer of credit cards in the U.S., surpassing rival J.P. Morgan Chase. The assimilated former MBNA entity will be called Bank of America Card Services, and will also incorporate Bank of America's existing credit card operations. The combined Bank of America Card Services organization will have more than 40 million active U.S. accounts and nearly $140 billion in managed outstanding balances. Bank of America is already the world's leader in active debit cards.

Bank of America is currently constructing a massive new headquarters for its New York City operations. The skyscaper will be located on 42nd Street and Avenue of the Americas, at Bryant Park, and will feature state-of-the-art "green" - environmentally friendly - technology throughout its 1.2 million square feet (120,000 m²) of office space. After its completion, the building will be the headquarter for the company's investment banking division, and will also host most of Bank of America's New York based staff.

Divisions

Bank of America today comprises three main divisions.

Global Consumer and Small Business Banking

Global Consumer and Small Business Banking (GC&SBB) is the largest division in the company, and deals primarily with consumer banking and credit card issuance. The acquisition of FleetBoston in 2004 and MBNA in 2005 significantly expanded its size and range of services, resulting in about 51% of the company's total revenue in 2005. It competes directly with the retail banking divisions of Citigroup and JPMorganChase. The GC&SBB organization includes over 5,700 retail branches and over 17,000 ATMs across the United States.

MBNA merger

As a result of the merger with MBNA, Bank of America is now the largest issuer of credit, debit and prepaid cards in the world based on total purchase volume as well as the largest Consumer bank and #1 small business lender in the United States.

Global Corporate and Investment Banking

Global Corporate and Investment Banking (GCIB), also known as Banc of America Securities, provides mergers and acquisitions advisory, underwriting, as well as trading in fixed income and equities markets. Its strongest groups include Leveraged Finance, Syndicated Loans, and Mortgage Backed Securities. It also has one of the largest research teams on Wall Street.

Global Wealth and Investment Management

Global Wealth and Investment Management (GWIM) manages assets of institutions and individuals. It is among the 10 largest U.S. wealth managers (ranked by private banking assets under management in accounts of $1 million or more as of June 30, 2005). In July 2006, Chairman Ken Lewis announced that GWIM's total assets under management exceeded $500,000.

Controversy

Enron scandal

Bank of America was one of several banks linked to the fraudulent activities committed by Enron. In 2004, they settled a class action lawsuit brought on by Enron investors, for $69 million. The suit specifically claimed that Bank of America had "actively engaged and participated in the fraudulent scheme" and "furthered Enron's fraudulent course of conduct and business in several ways".

Under the settlement, the bank denies that it violated any law and explains that it settled the matter solely to eliminate the uncertainties, expense and distraction of further protracted litigation.

Raiding Social Security

In 2004, a California jury decided that Bank of America had illegally raided the Social Security benefits of a million customers. The jury awarded damages that could exceed $1 billion. Bank of America had been accused of withholding customers' direct deposit social security benefit payments to cover debts in cases where a debt is owed to the bank by the customer (e.g.: due to an overdrawn account, various service fees, etc.), this is in direct violation of California state law. The suit claims that Bank of America knew about the law, and concealed the facts of this law from their customers. Bank of America counters that it only followed standard industry practice of using monthly pre-authorized direct deposits to cover overdrafts and the like. -- The case is on appeal.

In 1999, a class action lawsuit was filed against Bank of America for engaging in the practice of "Biggest Check First" check-clearing. Put simply, the bank clears checks in order from biggest to smallest for transactions presented on the same business day, with less regard to what time they come in during that business day. Customers allege that this is purposely done, to cause more checks to bounce, triggering more overdraft fees for the bank to collect.

Here's an example: A customer has $1,000 in his checking account. Check numbers 101 through 104 come in for processing for $60, $10, $30 and $950, in that order. If the checks are processed by the check number or in ascending order (smallest to largest), the first three checks will clear and the fourth will bounce, meaning the customer will be charged one fee for insufficient funds. NationsBank (now Bank of America) can charge $19 to $35 for each bounced check. If the checks are processed largest to smallest, however, the $950 check will clear first, and the checks for $60, $30 and $10 will bounce, resulting in $57 to $105 in fees. (It depends on how many over drafts the customer has. The first is $19. It progressively rises to $35 with each additional.)

The bank employs the same practice for ATM and debit card transactions. Another example: A customer has $100 in her account. On Saturday she withdraws $80 from an ATM. On Sunday she buys a coffee using her debit card for $3 and puchases a small amount of gas for $15. As of Sunday night, she still has $2 remaining in her account. On Monday, her recurring monthly cable bill is auto-debited from her account, for $150. The bank clears this transaction even though the customer is now in the negative. This is standard grounds for an overdraft fee, so the customer expects to find one on her next statement.

However, when the customer checks her statement, she finds four overdraft charges. One for the cable bill, plus one for each of the debits over the weekend. The customer is naturally confused, as she had not overdrawn her account for any of the weekend transactions. Yet, the bank counts those charges as overdrafts because they do not post until the next business day (Monday), even though the transactions were all authorized over the weekend. Since the bank employs "biggest check first", the smaller weekend transactions clear after the cable bill that came in later in the business day. The customer get four overdraft charges total, instead of one.

BOA paid a $9M settlement and the lawsuit was dismissed without an admission of fault. Bank of America continues to process transactions from highest to lowest amounts. New York, California, and Nevada are currently fighting the practice.

When asked about the practice, bank representatives claim that it insulates the Bank from undue risk. By paying the largest items first, the Bank ensures that no loss is incurred on the largest items, by withdrawing the appropriate funds from the customer's account and honoring the largest, and most risky items. Smaller items, which may or may not be honored against a negative balance, depending on the account officer's decision, pose less liability to the Bank, and are therefore paid last. Also, regardless of when checks are written, their negotiation can happen in a number of ways, including direct presentment at the drawee bank, at which time funds are immediately reserved out of the customer's account to pay cash to the payee who cashes the item. Such policies are designed to reduce the risk of loss to the bank.

Furthermore, bank representatives also state that larger transactions typically represent more important items on a customer's account such as a mortgage or rent payment, car payment, insurance payment, utility payments, etc. By paying these items first, it is ensured that the customer's most important items are not affected, although smaller less important items may be affected.

Bank of America customers also claim that the bank's ATM and Online Banking systems can be confusing, and cause a false impression of the available balance. Customers claim that this increases the likelihood of incurring overdraft fees. Customers claim that when using their Bank of America debit card for purchases or ATM withdrawals, the amount of the charge is immediately deducted, then made available several days later, then deducted once again. This is as a result of the authorization hold process. If charges were made during the period when the money was temporarily back in the account, those charges go through - and incur an overdraft fee. BOA's response is that their Online Banking and ATM systems should be used in conjunction with a written account register so that customers are aware of all pending transactions on their accounts.

In fairness, the "Biggest Check First" policy is not unique to Bank of America, and is common among other large U.S. banks, such as JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, and Wachovia. BoA has increased the length of time [debit card] authorizations are listed as pending in online banking from 1 business day to 3 business days to reduce confusion over the actual available balance.

Online Bill Pay

Another relatively new policy Bank of America has implemented is the sending of automated bill payments without available funds -- and the related charging of fees. If previous Fleet or BankBoston customers had an automated bill payment set up but either scheduled the payment for the wrong day or else didn't deposit necessary funds in time, the bank would attempt to make the payments for three days until the money was available, before cancelling the payment attempt. As no money would be transferred unless funding was available, no fees were charged.

Bank of America, however, changed their policy to send the payments even with a zero balance, even electronic payments where it is clear the funds do not exist. They then charge customers up to $35 per scheduled payment. They also do not then cancel the payments, but continue to re-attempt the payments one more time, meaning that if customers do not deposit funds immediately into their account, they can be charged up to $35 per mistakenly scheduled payment, for up to two mistaken payments, or $35 per incident, where their previous banks would have charged nothing.

In February 2006 Bank of America also changed their online bill pay policy to send customers' automated bill payments without debiting the payments from their account until the day after they are processed by the payees' bank. This differs from most online banking customers' previous experience with having the funds immediately debited from their account to help keep their account balance positive, and would seem to be done purely to incur additional overdraft charges.

Online banking security

Website redirection weakness

In April 2005, Bank of America was the target of a phishing scheme that exploited a flaw in the Bank of America online banking website. Normally, a phishing link that accesses an illegitimate website can be detected by carefully reading the URL in the web browser. One URL for the Bank of America website allowed a second URL to be passed to the Bank of America website for redirection. This allowed the phishing link to access an illegitimate website through the Bank of America website and thereby display a "real" Bank of America URL while accessing the illegitimate site.

SiteKey

Announced in May of 2005, SiteKey, provided by Passmark Security, is an additional login step added to the Bank of America online banking website. If the Bank of America system recognizes the user's computer it displays a small image and a text token previously selected by the user. If the user does not recognize the image the user is instructed to not log in and call a phone number for "Electronic Banking Services." If the Bank of America system does not recognize the user's computer the user is asked one of three security questions that had previously been selected and answered by the user. The bank claims this as an added security measure to help reduce the likelihood of phishing attacks by allowing users to easily verify the authenticity of the server to which they are connected.

Though SiteKey will by no means render Bank of America customers immune to phishing attacks, it is a step in the right direction since it demands a two-way exchange of authenticating information: The Web server presents the user its credentials (your chosen image and text) as a means of proving they really are the bank. Only after seeing the image they have chosen, the bank instructs its users, should they, in turn, present their credentials (user ID and passcode).

Some people have noted that Sitekey, or at very least customer account numbers, may be subject to exposure via brute force attacks. When a user enters any valid bank account number, Sitekey prompts for the selection of the correct Sitekey. Thus it is possible to confirm the existence of a valid account by inspecting the format of a valid account number, cleverly tuning guesses of account numbers, and repeatedly submitting the numbers.

While the two-way authentication is currently an uncommon function among the consumer banking industry, the recognition of the user's computer, or more accurately, their browser, is still done in the normal way using HTTP cookies. Additionally, an Adobe Flash shared object is added to the user's computer that stores identifying details of customers, such as log-ins, in a way that is said to prevent most customers from finding or deleting them.

International operations

In 2005, Bank of America acquired a 9% stake in China Construction Bank, China's second largest bank, for $3 billion. It represented the company's largest foray into China's growing banking sector. Bank of America currently has offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Guangzhou and is looking to greatly expand its Chinese business as a result of this deal. Bank of America has also invested in opening new branches in India, particularly Mumbai.

Bank of America operates under the name Bank Boston in many other countries, including Brazil. In Mexico, it operates under the name Bank of America.

Diversity

Bank of America was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine. Furthermore, Amy Woods Brinkley, the Bank's Global Risk Executive, and Barbara Desoer, the Bank's Global Technology and Service Fulfillment Executive, were named two of the most powerful women in Banking by US Banker magazine, and were among the "top 50 most powerful women in business," as ranked by Fortune.

Radio Financial Adviser Clark Howard takes on Bank of America

A San Francisco man, Matthew Shinnick, was arrested and jailed when he tried to verify the validity of a check at Bank of America branch after receiving a check from someone who had seen his ad for bicycles on craigslist.com. Radio financial adviser Clark Howard found out about this story and talked with the man, Matthew Shinnick, who has spent about $14,000 in legal fees to clear his name. He went into his bank to see if the check was legitimate and verify that there was money in the person’s account. He was told it was a valid account and so he cashed the check. At that point, BOA employees called the police and Shinnick was arrested on fraud charges because the check was actually a phony. He had no idea that the real criminal had used the name of a legitimate company to fake a check. So, Matthew sat in the bank branch for hours while police figured out what to do and then spent the night in jail. Once he got out, he wanted to clear his name legally so the arrest would not come back to haunt him. He had to hire attorneys to do this and it cost him nearly $14,000. He then went to Bank of America and asked that the bank cover his fees because it was the bank’s error. But so far BOA has refused. Clark Howard has had two officers from BOA to represent the bank, and stated he would cover half the legal costs if BOA would cover half. BOA has refused and Clark Howard stated that they have threatened legal action against him. Clark Howard has urged his listeners to withdraw their money and refuse to do business with Bank of America any longer. He keeps a running tally on how much money his listeners have withdrawn from BOA on his website, www.clarkhoward.com.

Major sponsorships

Bank of America owns the naming rights of several venues in the sports world.

* Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte - Carolina Panthers, NFL.
* Bank of America 500, a NASCAR race that is hosted annually at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
* Bank of America Colonial, a PGA Tour golf tournament.
* Official bank of
o Major League Baseball
o Minor League Baseball
o Little League

Ad campaigns that run during the Little League World Series and the World Series use the slogan "The Official Bank of Baseball."

External links

# Bank of America homepage
# Find this bank's branches on myBank.com

Source:-Wikipedia

Hewlett-Packard

2006-09-20T18:58:00.000-09:00

Type: Public (NYSE: HPQ)

Founded: Palo Alto, California (1939)

Headquarters: Palo Alto, California, USA

Key people:

Mark V. Hurd, CEO & President
Patricia Dunn, Chairman until Jan-07
Mark V. Hurd, Chairman from Jan-07
Robert Wayman, CFO
William Hewlett, Founder
David Packard, Founder

Industry:

Computer Systems
Computer Peripherals
Computer software
Consulting
IT Services

Products:

Computer Monitors
Digital Cameras
Digital Imaging
Personal Computers
Printers

Revenue: $88.89 billion USD (2006)

Net income: $3.17 Billion USD (2006)

Employees: 150,000 (2006)

Website: Hewlett-Packard

Company history

Founding

HP was founded in 1939 as a manufacturer of test and measurement instruments with a US$538 investment in a Palo Alto, CA garage by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.[1] They had both graduated from Stanford University in 1934. They founded their company in a garage there, but they did this while still Fellows at Stanford (so their story was not quite rags to riches, more academic gowns to riches)[1]. Their first product was a precision audio oscillator, the Model 200A. Their innovation was the use of a small night-light bulb as a temperature dependent resistor in a critical portion of the circuit. This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. Their company's name, Hewlett-Packard, was derived from their last names and had Bill not won a coin toss, the company today could have been known as Packard-Hewlett. One of the company's earliest customers was Walt Disney Productions, who bought eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) for use in testing the Fantasound stereophonic sound system for the movie Fantasia.

The sixties and seventies

HP is recognized as the symbolic founder of Silicon Valley, although it did not actively investigate semiconductor devices until a few years after the "Traitorous Eight" had abandoned William Shockley to create Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. Hewlett-Packard's HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use. Instruments and calculators were some of the products using these devices.
"The new Hewlett-Packard 9100A personal computer" is "ready, willing, and able ... to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer."

"The new Hewlett-Packard 9100A personal computer" is "ready, willing, and able ... to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer."

HP is acknowledged by Wired magazine as the producer of the world's first personal computer, in 1968, the Hewlett-Packard 9100A.[2] HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared." An engineering triumph at the time, the logic circuit was produced without any integrated circuits; the assembly of the CPU having been entirely executed in discrete components. With CRT readout, magnetic card storage, and printer the price was around $5000.

The company earned global respect for a variety of products. They introduced the world's first handheld scientific electronic calculator in 1972 (the HP-35), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the HP-65), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the HP-41C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator HP-28C. Like their scientific and business calculators, their oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and other measurement instruments have a reputation for sturdiness and usability (the latter products are now part of spin-off Agilent's product line). The company's design philosophy in this period was summarized as "design for the guy at the next bench".

The eighties and beyond

In 1984, HP introduced both inkjet and laser printers for the desktop. Along with its scanner product line, these have later been developed into successful multifunction products, the most significant being single-unit printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. The print mechanisms in HP's tremendously popular LaserJet line of laser printers depend almost entirely on Canon's components (print engines), which in turn use technology developed by Xerox. HP develops the hardware, firmware, and software that convert data into dots for the mechanism to print.

In the 1990s, HP expanded their computer product line, which initially had been targeted at university, research, and business customers, to reach consumers. Later in the decade HP opened hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell online, direct to consumers; the store was rebranded "HP Home & Home Office Store" in 2005. HP also grew through acquisitions, buying Apollo Computer in 1989, Convex Computer in 1995, and Compaq in 2002. Compaq itself had bought Tandem Computers in 1997 (which had been started by ex-HP employees), and Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998. Following this strategy HP became a major player in desktops, laptops, and servers for many different markets.

In 1987, the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett and Packard started their business was designated as a California State historical landmark.

In July of 1999, HP appointed Carly Fiorina as CEO. Fiorina was the first woman ever to serve as CEO of a company included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Fiorina was forced to resign on February 9, 2005.

Technology and Products

HP has a successful line of printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, PDAs, servers, workstations, and home-small business computers. HP today promotes itself as not just being a hardware and software company, but also one that offers a full range of services to architect, implement and support today's IT infrastructure.

Imaging and Printing

According to HP's 2005 U.S. SEC 10-K filing,[3] HP's Imaging and Printing Group is "the leading imaging and printing systems provider in the world for printer hardware, printing supplies and scanning devices, providing solutions across customer segments from individual consumers to small and medium businesses to large enterprises."

Products and Technology associated with the Imaging and Printing Group include:

* Inkjet and LaserJet printers, consumables and related products.
* the Indigo Digital Press
* the HP Web Jetadmin printer management software

Personal Systems Group

HP's Personal Systems Group is "one of the leading vendors of personal computers ("PCs") in the world based on unit volume shipped and annual revenue."

Personal Systems Group products/technology include:

* Consumer PCs including the HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario series.
* Workstations for Unix, Windows and Linux systems.
* Handheld Computing including iPAQ Pocket PC handheld computing devices
* Digital Entertainment including DVD+RW drives, HP Movie Writer and HP Digital Entertainment Center. HP resold the Apple iPod from HP until November 2005.

Technology Solutions Group

In HP's financial reporting, HP groups its Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP Services and Software under Technology Solutions Group.

HP's Enterprise Storage and Servers Group has product/technology including:

* the ProLiant entry line of x86 based servers (from Compaq)
* the BladeSystem x86 based blade servers
* the Integrity line using the Itanium processor architecture (with Intel) running on several operating systems including HP-UX (a UNIX implementation)
* the HP AlphaServer productline using the Alpha processor (from DEC) and running on both:
o Tru64 operating system (from DEC)
o the OpenVMS large-scale, highly available server operating system (from DEC)
* the NonStop high-reliability architecture and operating system (from Tandem Computers)
* MIPs based Nonstop fault-tolerant server products
* the PA-RISC processor architecture
* the HP 9000 "Superdome" line of Servers and workstations
* the StorageWorks product line, which includes business class and enterprise class data storage and protection products.[4]
* the ProCurve family of network switches, wireless access points, and routers.
HP's Software division has products/technologies including:

* the OpenView family of management software
* the OpenCall family of telecom software

HP Labs

HP Labs (or HP Laboratories) is the research arm of HP. Founded in 1966, HP Labs' function is to deliver breakthrough technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HP's current strategies. An example of recent HP Lab technology includes the Memory spot chip.

Partnerships

Hewlett-Packard is a supporter of FOSS and Linux. Some HP employees, such as Linux CTO and former Debian Project Leader Bdale Garbee actively contribute and have official Open Source job responsibilities. Many others participate in the Open Source community as unpaid volunteers. HP is also known in the (GNU/)Linux community for releasing drivers for many of their printers under the GNU GPL.

Hewlett-Packard also works extensively with Microsoft and uses technology from most major software and hardware vendors. Until November 2005, HP offered a re-branded version of Apple's famous iPod

Culture

The founders, known to friends and employees alike as Bill and Dave, developed a unique management style that has come to be known as the HP Way. In Bill's words, the HP Way is "a core ideology . . . [that] includes a deep respect for the individual, a dedication to affordable quality and reliability, a commitment to community responsibility, and a view that the company exists to make technical contributions for the advancement and welfare of humanity."[6]

The HP Alumni Association maintains a tribute to Bill and Dave's version of the HP Way, circa 1992.

Management

* CEO: Mark Hurd (March 29, 2005 - current)
* Non-executive Chairman: Patricia C. Dunn (February 2005 - current) Resigned Tuesday September 12, 2006, effective as of January 18, 2007.

History

* Founder and CEO: David Packard (CEO: 1964 - 1969)
* Founder and CEO: William Hewlett (CEO: 1969 - 1978)
* CEO: John A. Young (1978 - 1992)
* CEO: Lewis Platt (1992 - July 18, 1999)
* Chairman and CEO: Carly Fiorina (July 19, 1999 - February 9, 2005, Appointed chairman in 2000)
* Interim CEO: Robert P. Wayman (February 10, 2005 - March 28, 2005)

Diversity

Hewlett-Packard received a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign starting in 2003, the second year of the report. In addition, the company was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine.

Hewlett-Packard is also involved in the NEPAD e-school program to provide all schools in Africa with computers and internet access.

Ad campaigns

Hewlett-Packard has used a number of innovative commercials to sell its products.

You + HP: digital photography

A television ad campaign for Hewlett-Packards digital photography (titled "You + HP: digital photography") has been noted for its simple special effects and choice of music. It won "Campaign of the Year" from Adweek magazine in 2004.[8]

Songs used in "You + HP" Campaign:

* "Picture Book" by The Kinks
* "Out of the Picture" by The Robins
* "Pictures of You" by The Cure
* "The Rainbow" by The Apples in Stereo
* "Across the Universe" by The Beatles

Acquisitions

Data Systems, Inc.

A small 5-person company called Data Systems, Inc. Owned by a chemical manufacturer, Union Carbide, who failed in their diversification efforts, HP bought the group and this helped to launch the HP 2116A in 1966. A computer designed to automate the collection and processing of data from the company’s test and measurement devices, it marked HPs entry into the growing computer industry.

Apollo

In 1989, HP Acquired Apollo computer for $476 million. HP was able to achieve a growth in market share after the merger; with the market at the time valued at $4.1 billion and the fastest-growing area of the market.

Compaq

In 2002, Hewlett-Packard merged with Compaq, a controversial move intended to make the company the personal computing leader. The merger opposition was led by Walter Hewlett, son of original founder William Hewlett.

AppIQ

In October of 2005, Hewlett-Packard acquired the private company AppIQ (short for "Application IQ"). The company was founded in 2001 by Ash Ashutosh and David Chang, and offered several digital storage solutions. The company had employed up to 235 people by June 2005.

Mercury Interactive

On July 25, 2006, HP announced plans to acquire Mercury Interactive (MERQ.PK), a company that provides Business Technology Optimization software (i.e. software that helps a company govern, develop and maintain its technology stack). This acquisition is expected to occur in Q4 2006 and will result in an HP software business of around $2 billion.

Competitors

Major competitors of HP in the computer business include Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway, Lenovo (Purchased IBM's Non-server Personal Computer Business), Sony and Toshiba. Major competitors of HP in the server business include Sun Microsystems, IBM and Dell. Major competitors of HP in the printer business include Brother, Canon, Epson, Lexmark and Dell (who rebrands and repackages Lexmark products)

HP pretexting scandal

On September 5th, 2006 Newsweek published a story revealing that the chairwoman of HP, Patricia Dunn, had hired a team of independent electronic-security experts that later spied on HP board members and several journalists, to determine the source of confidential details regarding HP's long-term strategy that was published part of a Cnet article in January, 2006.[9] The group of electronic-security experts had used a technique known as pretexting to obtain call records of HP board members and nine journalists, including reporters for Cnet Networks, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The investigators had misrepresented themselves as the board members and journalists to their phone companies in order to obtain their phone records. Dunn has claimed she did not know beforehand the methods the investigators used to try and determine the source of the leak. [10] On September 12, 2006, HP announced that Mark Hurd, the current CEO, will replace her as Chairman after the HP board meeting on January 18, 2007. Dunn will continue as a HP board member after January 18, 2007, a position she has held since 1998. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has indicated that charges will be filed against her and several other people inside and outside of HP within the next week.

U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Investigation into HP

On September 11th, 2006, CNet News.com publicly released a five page letter dated on September 11th, 2006 written by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce to Patricia Dunn stating that they have been, for the past seven months, conducting an investigation on internet based data brokers who they state use "lies, fraud and deception" to acquire personal information and has stated that anyone can pay a "modest fee" to acquire "itemized incoming and outgoing call logs" for not only cell phone numbers but also for VoIP numbers, landline numbers, and unpublished phone numbers. Additional data that could be given are addresses and other personal data without the consent or prior notice to the owner of the number. The Committee on Energy and Commerce has found out about HP's use of pretexting through their September 6th SEC filing and through their own inquiry of HP's Nominating and Governance Committe and states that they are "troubled" by the information "particularly that it involves HP—one of America's corporate icons."

The Committee on Energy and Commerce Investigation is requesting, under Rules X and XI of the U.S. House of Representatives, the following information from HP by September 18th, 2006:

1. The name and identity of the outside consulting firm cited in HP's September 6th, 2006, filing with the SEC (the outside consulting firm), and of any other outside consultants who were hired by HP to assist in conducting the Leak Investigation.
2. Copies of any contracts, letters of engagement and investigative plans related to the Leak Investigation that was conducted by the outside consulting firm or by any other party.
3. The names and identities of all third parties, whether hired directly by HP or by HP's outside consulting firm, who were used during the leak investigation to procure, or to attempt to procure telephone records and other personal consumer information of any targets or subjects of the Leak Investiagation
4. A list of all individuals or entities that were targets or subjects, or designated as targets or subjects, of the Leak Investigation.
5. A list of all individuals, including HP employees, who were involved with conducting the Leak Investigation or who had contemporaneous knowledge of the Leak Investigation.
6. A list of all individuals or entities whose telephone records or other personal consumer information were procured or attempted to be procured by the outside consulting firm or by any party during the period January 1st, 2005, to the present.
7. A list of all individuals whose telephone records or other personal consumer information were procured by the outside consulting firm or by any party during the period January 1st, 2005, to the present. For each individual, describe the types of records that were procured.
8. Copies of all reports prepared for the Leak Investigation by the outside consulting firm or by any other party, including any and all analysis or opinions regarding the appropriateness or legality of pretexting.
9. A copy of the letter of engagement with the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati regarding the Committee Inquiry.
10. Copies of all reports prepared for the Committee Inquiry, including any report prepared by the firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
11. Copies of all draft and final Board minutes that either relate to either the Leak Investigation or the Committee Inquiry.

In addition to the above mentioned information, the Committee on Energy and Commerce is also requesting the following information from HP by September 25th, 2006:

12. All records relating either the Leak Investigation or Committee Inquiry, incuding but not limited to communications to or from the outside consulting firm, communications by or between HP employees or Board Members, and communications to or from the outside counsel. Please do not provide any copies of the actual telephone records or any other records procured.

Criticism

Legacy

It is a fact that Agilent Technologies, not HP, bears the product legacy of the original company founded in 1939. Agilent's current portfolio of electronic instruments are descended from HP's very earliest products. HP entered the computer business only after its instrumentation competencies were well-established. Similarly, the history of HP's printer products today can be traced back to the invention of the ThinkJet and LaserJet printers in the early 80's. Agilent was spun off from HP in 1999 and took everything related to instrumentation with it. The merger with Compaq drives HP even farther from its roots in instrumentation. Some include HP's original culture, embodied in the HP Way, in the definition of legacy. Critics claim the HP Way is no longer practiced at HP today.

Calculators

In March 2002, HP announced that it would no longer manufacture financial and scientific calculators – a product line and, indeed, a market, that HP had started thirty years before.[citation needed] HP later recanted and stated in a press release, "The bottom line is that HP calculators are here to stay and they are going to be better than ever, giving our customers more than ever."[12] The extremely popular HP-12C financial calculator, introduced in 1981, still remains in production today.

Iraq

During the Iran-Iraq war, HP was among the companies shipping militarily useful technology to Iraq through its Ohio branch according to the Financial Times.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq HP shipped militarily useful technology to US forces. The company support for American soldiers can be witnessed in widely distributed videos of soldiers resorting to "repairing" HP products with the precision of a machinegun when HP's outsourced foreign customer support refuses to service a 5510 printer. HP responded publicly with the statement "HP was aware of the issue and resolved it back in March [...] HP responds to each customer service request individually as appropriate and that response is confidential. We take customer service seriously and are committed to providing good customer service."

HP did not state that the defective equipment was replaced, only that the issue was resolved.

Outsourcing

In 1994, HP decided to outsource its manufacturing to third-party vendors and oversea countries to lower costs and raise profits. Today, desktop computers are assembled in Guadalajara, Mexico where HP employs approximately 1,500 workers. Notebook computers are assembled in China from third-party vendors. Servers and workstations are still assembled in the United States.

In 2003, HP had 140,000 employees world wide. Under HP's current restructuring program, HP began reducing its workforce to lower its costs. By 2006, HP experienced a record profit of $1.5 billion in just one quarter.

HP and the Environment

HP have been criticized by Greenpeace, among others. Greenpeace and other environmental groups have alleged HP of poor environmental standards, specifically in relation to the elimination of hazardous substances from products as specified by the European Union's RoHS guidelines for brominated flame retardants and PVC. Greenpeace is also alleging HP of not doing enough to recycle computers and other technology equipment.

Greenpeace's criticism of the technology industry is not limited exclusively to HP, as competitors such as Dell and Apple have also come under fire for alleged similar practices.

Source:-Wikipedia

Verizon Communications

2006-08-09T09:07:00.000-09:00

Type: Public (NYSE: VZ)

Founded: Merger of Bell Atlantic & GTE in 2000

Location: New York, New York, USA

Key people Ivan Seidenberg, CEO & Chairman
Lawrence Babbio, Jr., President & Vice-Chairman

Industry Communications Services

Products Broadband Internet services, Television service, Local wireline and wireless telecommunication services

Revenue $75.112 billion USD (2005)

Operating income $14.814 billion USD (2005)

Net income $7.397 billion USD (2005)

Employees 217,000 (2005)

Website Verizon

History

Pre-Verizon creation

Bell Atlantic

The origins of this company began as Bell Atlantic, and was created as one of the original Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) in 1984, when AT&T was broken up. Bell Atlantic's original roster of operating companies included:

* The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania
* New Jersey Bell Telephone Company
* The Diamond State Telephone Company
* The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company
* The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland
* The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia
* The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia

Bell Atlantic originally operated in the U.S. states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia as well as Washington, DC.

In 1994, Bell Atlantic became the first RBOC to entirely drop the original names of its original operating companies. Ameritech simply added d/b/a names to its operating companies; US West and BellSouth had merged their operating companies. Operating company titles were simplified to:

* Bell Atlantic — Delaware, Inc.
* Bell Atlantic — Maryland, Inc.
* Bell Atlantic — New Jersey, Inc.
* Bell Atlantic — Pennsylvania, Inc.
* Bell Atlantic — Virginia, Inc.
* Bell Atlantic — Washington, D.C., Inc.
* Bell Atlantic — West Virginia, Inc.

In 1996, CEO and Chairman Raymond Smith orchestrated Bell Atlantic's merger with NYNEX. When it merged, it moved its corporate headquarters from Philadelphia to New York City. NYNEX was consolidated into this name by 1997.

Prior to its merger with GTE, Bell Atlantic traded on the NYSE under the "BEL" symbol.

NYNEX

NYNEX was created as one of the original Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) on January 1, 1984 and it owned New York Telephone and New England Telephone.

NYNEX also operated cable TV services in some parts of the UK, although these were later sold to Cable & Wireless, which subsequently sold these to NTL.

In Gibraltar, NYNEX had a 50 per cent stake in a joint venture with the Government of Gibraltar, called Gibraltar NYNEX Communications, also known as GNC or GibNYNEX. The NYNEX name was retained after the U.S. parent company's merger with Verizon, before being dropped in 2002 in favor of Gibtelecom, although it is still used colloquially in Gibraltar.

Prior to its merger with Bell Atlantic, NYNEX traded under the "NYN" symbol.

GTE

General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) was the largest of the "independent" telephone companies during the days of the Bell System. It would later merge with the second largest independent, Continental Telephone (ConTel). They also owned Automatic Electric, a telephone equipment supplier similar in many ways to Western Electric, and Sylvania Lighting, the only non-telephone company under GTE ownership. GTE provided local telephone service in a large number of areas of the U.S. through operating companies, much like how AT&T provided local telephone service through its 22 Bell Operating Companies.

GTE operated in Canada via controlling interest in subsidiary companies such as BC TEL and Quebec-Téléphone.

Its former Canadian subsidiaries have combined with the former Alberta Government Telephones (AGT) to create TELUS, the second largest telecommunications carrier in Canada.

Creation of Verizon

The acquisition of GTE by Bell Atlantic, on June 30, 2000, which formed Verizon, was among the largest mergers in United States business history. It was the result of a definitive merger agreement, dated July 27, 1998, between Bell Atlantic, based in New York City since the merger with NYNEX in 1996, and GTE, which was in the process of moving its headquarters from Stamford, Connecticut, to Irving, Texas.

The Bell Atlantic-GTE merger, priced at more than $52 billion at the time of the announcement, closed nearly two years later, following analysis and approvals by Bell Atlantic and GTE shareowners, 27 state regulatory commissions and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and clearance from the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) and various international agencies.

The merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, to form Verizon Communications, became effective on June 30, 2000, with an exchange ratio of 1.22 shares of Verizon Communications Common Stock for each share of GTE Common Stock owned. Fractional shares resulting from the exchange of GTE stock into Verizon Communications shares were sold at a price of $55.00 per share. Verizon began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under its new "VZ" symbol on Monday, July 3, 2000.

Meanwhile, on September 21, 1999, Bell Atlantic and UK-based Vodafone AirTouch Plc (now Vodafone Group Plc) announced that they had agreed to create a new wireless business with a national footprint, a single brand and a common digital technology—composed of Bell Atlantic's and Vodafone's U.S. wireless assets (Bell Atlantic Mobile (which was previously called Bell Atlantic-NYNEX Mobile by 1997), AirTouch Cellular, PrimeCo Personal Communications and AirTouch Paging). This wireless joint venture received regulatory approval in six months, and began operations as Verizon Wireless on April 4, 2000, kicking off the new "Verizon" brand name. GTE's wireless operations became part of Verizon Wireless—creating what was initially the nation's largest wireless company before Cingular Wireless acquired AT&T Wireless in 2004—when the Bell Atlantic–GTE merger closed nearly three months later. Verizon then became the majority owner (55%) of Verizon Wireless.

Genuity was formerly the Internet division of GTE Corp and spun off in 2000.[2] Level 3 Communications acquired the bankrupt ISP in 2002 for only $137 million; a bargain-basement price considering the $616 million that a pre-Bell Atlantic-merger GTE paid for Genuity (then BBN Planet) in 1997.

Merger effects

Note this section refers to land lines only, as Verizon Wireless operates nationwide.

Verizon shares were made a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on April 8, 2004.[4] Verizon currently has 140.3 million land lines in service. With the MCI merger, it has more than 250,000 employees. Verizon serves customers throughout much of the United States. The primary states that it provides service to include:

* Northwestern Connecticut
* Delaware
* District of Columbia
* Maine*
* Maryland
* Massachusetts*
* New Hampshire*
* New Jersey
* New York
* Pennsylvania**
* Rhode Island*
* Vermont*
* Virginia**
* West Virginia

These states are served by the following renamed Bell Operating Companies:

* Verizon Delaware, Inc. — Also serves a portion of southeastern Pennsylvania
* Verizon Maryland, Inc.
* Verizon New England, Inc. — noted with a (*)
* Verizon New Jersey, Inc.
* Verizon New York, Inc. — Also serves northeastern Connecticut
* Verizon Pennsylvania, Inc.
* Verizon Virginia, Inc.
* Verizon Washington, D.C., Inc.
* Verizon West Virginia, Inc.

(**) Also served by GTE operating companies (refer below)

It also provides service to secondary markets (mostly from its acquisition of GTE) in:

* Arizona*****
* California****, *****
* Florida
* Idaho****
* Illinois**
* Indiana***
* Michigan***
* Nevada*****
* North Carolina*
* Ohio**
* Oregon****
* Puerto Rico
* South Carolina*
* Texas
* Washington****
* Wisconsin**

These states are served by these operating companies:

* GTE Southwest, Inc. dba Verizon Southwest,Inc., which serves only Texas.
* GTE Florida, Inc. dba Verizon Florida, Inc.
* Verizon South, Inc. (marked with a *)
* Verizon North, Inc. (marked with a **)
* Contel of the South, Inc. dba Verizon Mid-States, Inc. (marked with a ***) Also served by Verizon North.
* Verizon Northwest, Inc.(marked with a ****) Operations in California do business as "Verizon West Coast, Inc."
* Verizon California, Inc. (marked with a *****)

Due to the rigorous climate and high costs, GTE Alaska was sold to Alaska Power and Telephone Company rather than be merged with Verizon.

Verizon also owns stakes in some international communications companies, most notably 23% of Vodafone Omnitel in Italy, which serves over 23MM wireless subscribers as of December 31, 2005. On April 3, 2006 Verizon agreed to sell its stakes in Verizon Dominicana (operating in the Dominican Republic), CANTV of Venezuela, and Telecomunicaciones de Puerto Rico, Inc. (TELPRI) in Puerto Rico to Telmex and America Móvil for over $3 billion. Verizon's other international investment is 50% ownership of Gibraltar NYNEX Communications.

In 2002, Verizon sold GTE's former telephone operations in 3 states: Missouri and Alabama operations were sold to CenturyTel, and Kentucky operations were sold to Alltel, which later spun off its landline operations as Windstream. In 2005, Verizon sold off GTE's former telephone operations in Hawaii to The Carlyle Group, This operation is now known as Hawaiian Telcom. As of 2006, Verizon's operations in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are for sale.

MCI Acquisition

On February 14, 2005, Verizon agreed to acquire MCI, formerly WorldCom, after SBC Communications agreed to acquire AT&T just a few weeks earlier.

Media coverage has focused on several ways in which that acquisition, once completed, would benefit Verizon, including economies of scale derived from a potential productivity boost to be achieved via the elimination of thousands of jobs at the combined company, and access to the large base of business customers currently served by MCI. The real benefit to Verizon was the acquisition of long-haul lines. The bulk of Verizon's business is concentrated in the eastern United States. This not only renders the company, effectively, a regional phone company, but also forces it to pay usage fees to long-haul carriers, such as former MCI, to complete calls for its customers whenever those calls go outside the Verizon "footprint". That need is obviated by the MCI acquisition and was key in the long term market position strategy. By January 6, 2006, MCI was incorporated into Verizon with the name Verizon Business. With this merger, Verizon also acquired the naming rights to the Washington, DC home of the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals, the Verizon Center (formerly known as the MCI Center).

Just prior to the acquisition, MCI had purchased an internet services company, Totality.

Verizon, with MCI, is currently the second largest telecommunications company in the United States. After completion of the BellSouth/AT&T merger, AT&T will become the largest telecom company in the world.

Verizon services

Voice

Verizon provides several different types of land line services - standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) service as well as VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and optical fiber line services. In addition, Verizon offers long distance services.

Video

Verizon launched its FiOS Video service in Keller, Texas on September 22, 2005. FiOS TV [5] uses an optical fiber network to deliver more than 330 total channels, more than 180 digital video and music channels more than 20 high-definition channels, and 1,800 video-on-demand titles.

Data

Verizon provides DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) Internet service in many areas where it offers phone service. See Verizon Online DSL.

Verizon recently began offering FTTP (Fiber to the Premises, or Fiber to the Home) to some subscribers. Verizon calls this "FiOS Internet".

Directory operations

The Yellow Pages business for Verizon known as SuperPages, and is a Texas-based sales, publishing and related services with 1,200 directory titles and a circulation of about 121 million copies in 41 states. The web site receives approximately 17 million visitors a month. It had an operating revenue of $3.6 billion in 2004 and employs 7,300 nationwide.[7] In a move to leverage against higher traffic sites, Superpages linked up with Google to provide search advertising services to its millions of listed businesses. SuperPages will offer its advertisers the ability to bid for Google search terms.

With an estimated $17 billion in assets, Verizon is exploring a sale or spin-off of the business unit to finance its expansion in wireless and high-speed Internet services.[9] Verizon would not be the first Baby Bell to rid itself of its directory publishing operations; Qwest sold off its QwestDex directory services to become Dex Media, and SBC Communications, now AT&T, sold its Illinois operations to RH Donnelley ("SBC Yellow Pages published by RH Donnelley").

Advertising

In 2005, Verizon was the largest spender on advertising in the United States. The company spent $1.75 Billion. This was an increase of over 6.1% versus 2004. Other telecom companies Cingular and Sprint were two and three on the Advertising Age list.

Hurricane response

In 2005, as Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, Verizon donated over 10,000 wireless phones with free airtime, distributed over 20,000 prepaid calling cards and staffed call centers with over 10,000 volunteers to support a national telethon. Also, Verizon contributed more than $10.8 million in employee donations and corporate matching gifts.

NSA cooperation

In 2006, USA Today published an article which claimed that the United States National Security Agency had been gathering calling records from three of the largest carriers in the US, including Verizon.

On May 12, 2006, Verizon denied allegations it provided any customer calling information to the NSA.

USA Today editors, on an inside page of the June 20,2006 edition, retracted their claim that Verizon had contracted with NSA to provide any calling records or information.

* Airfone — Air-ground radiotelephone service offered by Verizon
* Verizon SmartPark — Advanced Telecommunications Services

Corporate governance

Current members of the board of directors of Verizon Communications are: James Barker, Richard Carrión, Robert Lane, Sandra Moose, Joseph Neubauer, Thomas O'Brien, Hugh Price, Ivan Seidenberg, Walter Shipley, John R. Stafford, and Robert Storey.

Verizon's competitors

Landline

* AT&T
* BellSouth
* Qwest
* Sprint Nextel
* LTT
* Embarq (Formerly Sprint Local Telephone)
* Windstream Communications (Formerly Alltel Landline and Valor Telecom)
* CenturyTel

References

1. ^ Verizon (26 January 2006). Verizon Communications Reports Strong 4Q 2005 Results, Driven by Continued Growth in Wireless and Broadband. Press release.
2. ^ Haley, Colin C., "Genuity Jilted by Verizon, Mulls Options", Internet.com, 25 July 2002.
3. ^ Pappalardo, Denise, "Changes afoot for Genuity customers", Network World, 10 February 2003.
4. ^ Isadore, Chris, "AT&T, Kodak, IP out of Dow", CNN/Money, 1 April 2004.
5. ^ Verizon FiOS TV: FiOS TV. Retrieved on February 12, 2006.
6. ^ Verizon FiOS: FiOS for Home. Retrieved on September 6, 2005.
7. ^ "Verizon may sell $17 billion directory services", Billings Gazette, December 7, 2005.
8. ^ "Verizon online directory in ad deal with Google", Reuters, 28 March 2006.
9. ^ Ranii, David, "Donnelley likely to pass on Verizon directories", The News & Observer, 6 December 2005.

External links

* Official site

* Verizon Wireless

* Verizon Business

* A History of Verizon Communications

* SuperPages

* Verizon News RSS Feed

Source:-Wikipedia

ConocoPhillips

2006-07-23T10:42:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NYSE: COP)

Founded August 30, 2002 (merger)
1875 (Conoco)
1917 (Phillips)

Location Houston, Texas, USA

Key people James Mulva, CEO & Chairman

Industry Oil and Gasoline

Products Petrochemical

Revenue $183.364 Billion USD (2005)

Net income $13.529 Billion USD (2005)

Employees 38,000 (2006)

Website Conocophillips

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) is an international energy company with its headquarters located in Houston, and one of the six "supermajor" oil companies in the world (along with Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Total and Chevron). It was founded by the merger of Conoco Inc. and the Phillips Petroleum Company on August 30, 2002. Calgary, Alberta is also home to ConocoPhillips in Canada.

In the United States, the company operates Conoco, Phillips 66, and Union 76 (which it bought from Unocal) retail gas stations. In Europe, it operates Jet filling stations in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden,Thailand and the United Kingdom. ProJet is the brand operated in Malaysia, Turkpetrol in Turkey, and COOP in Switzerland.

History

In 2005, the corporation began rebranding their Union 76 gas stations, prompting a petition campaign by fans hoping to save the historic 76 orange ball signage[1].

On March of 2006, Burlington Resources joined with ConocoPhillips.

See also

Brands of gasoline

References

Save the 76 Ball website

External links

* ConocoPhillips website

* Conoco/Phillips/76 promotional website

* World Internet News: "Big Oil Looking for a Government Handout", April 2006.

* Subsea firm listing

Source:- Wikipedia

Ford Motor Company

2006-06-19T08:25:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NYSE: F)

Founded 1903

Location Dearborn, Michigan
List of Ford factories

Key people

William Ford, Jr. President, Chairman of the Board, and CEO
Joseph Hinrichs Vice President

Executive operating committee:

Mark Schulz
Anne Stevens
Lewis Booth
Don Leclair
Mark Fields

Industry Automotive

Products

Aston Martin
Ford
Jaguar
Daimler (div. of Jaguar)
Land Rover
Lincoln
Mazda (controls 33.4%)
Mercury
Volvo (cars only)

Revenue $178.1 billion USD (2005)

Employees 327,531

Website Ford

The Ford Motor Company (usually called Ford; sometimes called FoMoCo), (NYSE: F) is an American multinational corporation that manufactures automobiles. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan, United States (where the company is currently headquartered), and incorporated in 1903. In its twentieth century heyday, Ford, along with General Motors and Chrysler, were known as Detroit's "Big Three" automakers, companies that dominated the American auto market. Toyota surpassed Ford in revenue starting in 2004. Ford remains one of the world's ten largest corporations by revenue.

Ford introduced methods for large-scale manufacturing of cars, and large-scale management of an industrial workforce, especially elaborately engineered manufacturing sequences typified by the moving assembly lines. Henry Ford's combination of highly efficient factories, highly paid workers, and low prices revolutionized manufacturing and came to be known around the world as Fordism by 1914.

Early history

Ford was launched from a converted wagon factory in 1903, with $28,000 cash from twelve investors. During its early years, the company produced just a few cars a day at its factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit. Groups of two or three men worked on each car from components made to order by other companies.

In 1908, the Ford company released the Ford Model T. The first Model Ts were built at the Piquette Manufacturing Plant. The company moved production to the much larger Highland Park Plant to keep up with the demand for the Model T, and by 1913 had developed all of the basic techniques of the assembly line and mass production. Ford introduced the world's first moving assembly line that year, which reduced chassis assembly time from 12½ hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes. However these innovations were not popular and turnover of workers was very high. Turnover meant delays and extra costs of training, and use of slow workers. In January 1914 solved the problem by doubling pay to $5 a day, cutting shifts from nine hours to an eight hour day, and instituting hiring practices that identified the best workers. Productivity soared and employee turnover plunged, as the cost per vehicle plummeted. Ford cut prices again and again and invented the system of franchised dealers who were loyal to his brand name.

By the end of 1913, Ford was producing 50% of all cars in the United States, and by 1918 half of all cars in the country were Model T's. Henry Ford is reported to have said that "any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." This was because black paint was quickest to dry; earlier models had been available in a variety of colors.

In 1919, Edsel Ford succeeded his father as president of the company, although Henry Ford still kept a hand in management. Although prices were kept low through highly efficient engineering, the company used an old-fashioned personalized management system, and neglected consumer demand for upscale vehicles. It steadily lost market share to GM and Chrysler, as these and other domestic and foreign competitors began offering fresher automobiles, with more innovative features and luxury options. GM had a range of models from relatively cheap to luxury, tapping all price points in the spectrum, while less wealthy people purchased used Model T's. The competitors also opened up new markets by extending credit for purchases, so consumers could buy these expensive automobiles with monthly payments. Ford initially resisted that approach, insisting that such debts would ultimately hurt the consumer and the general economy. Ford eventually joined in the credit markets in December 1927, when Ford unveiled the redesigned Model A, and retired the Model T after producing 15 million of them.

In 1925, Ford expanded its reach into the luxury auto market through its acquisition of the Lincoln Motor Company, and the Mercury division was established in the 1930s to serve the mid-price auto market

Post World War II developments

Henry Ford II, grandson of Henry Ford, served as President from 1945-1960, and as Chairman and CEO from 1960-1980. "Hank the Deuce" led Ford to became a publicly traded corporation in 1956. However, the Ford family maintains about 40% controlling interests in the company, through a series of Class B preferred stocks.

In 1946 Robert S. McNamara joined Ford Motor Company as manager of planning and financial analysis. He advanced rapidly through a series of top-level management positions to the presidency of Ford on 9 November 1960 one day after Kennedy's election. The first company head selected outside the Ford family, McNamara received substantial credit for Ford's expansion and success in the postwar period. Less than five weeks after becoming president at Ford, he accepted Kennedy's invitation to join his cabinet, as Secretary of Defense. He served in that post from January 21, 1961 - February 29, 1968

In the 1950s, Ford introduced the iconic Thunderbird in 1955 and the Edsel brand automobile line in 1958; Edsel is cancelled after less than 27 months in the marketplace in November 1960. The corporation bounced back from the failure of the Edsel by introducing its compact Ford Falcon in 1960 and the Mustang in 1964. By 1967, Ford of Europe was established.

Lee Iacocca was involved with the design of several successful Ford automobiles, most notably the Ford Mustang; he was also the "moving force," as one court put it, behind the notorious Ford Pinto. He promoted other ideas which did not reach the marketplace as Ford products. Eventually, he became the president of the Ford Motor Company, but he clashed with Henry Ford II and ultimately, in 1978, he was famously fired by Henry II, despite Ford posting a $2 billion dollar profit for the year.

Harold Poling served as Chairman and CEO from 1990-1993. Alex Trotman was Chairman and CEO from 1993-1998, and Jacques Nasser served at the helm from 1999-2001. Henry Ford's great-grandson, William Clay Ford Jr., is the company's current Chairman of the Board and CEO.

General corporate timeline

* 1896: Henry Ford builds his first vehicle – the Quadricycle – on a buggy frame with 4 bicycle wheels.
* 1901: Henry Ford wins high profile car race in Grosse Pointe, Mi.
* 1903: Ford Motor Company incorporated with 11 original investors. The original Model A "Fordmobile" is introduced - 1,708 cars are produced.
* 1906: Ford becomes the top selling brand in the US, with 8,729 cars produced.
* 1908: Model T is introduced. 15 million are produced through 1927.
* 1911: Ford opens first factory outside North America – in Manchester, England.
* 1913: The moving Assembly line is introduced at Highland Park assembly plant, making Model T production 8 times faster.
* 1914: Ford introduces $5 workday minimum wage – double the existing rate.
* 1918: Construction of the Rouge assembly complex begins.
* 1919: Edsel Ford succeeds Henry as Company President.
* 1921: Ford production exceeds 1 million cars per year, nearly 10 times more than Chevrolet - the next biggest selling brand.
* 1922: Ford purchases Lincoln Motor Company for US $8 million.
* 1925: Ford introduces Ford Tri-Motor airplane for airline services
* 1926: Ford Australia is founded in Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
* 1927: Model T production ends, Ford introduces the next generation Model A, from the Rouge complex.
* 1929: Ford regains production crown, with production peaking at 1.5 million cars
* 1931: Ford and Chevy brands begin to alternate as US production leaders, in battle for automobile sales during the Great Depression.
* 1932: Ford introduces the one-piece cast V8 block.
* 1936: Lincoln Zephyr is introduced.
* 1938: Mercury division is formed to fill the gap between economical Fords and luxury Lincolns.
* 1941: The Lincoln Continental is introduced. Ford begins building general purpose "jeep" for the military. First labor agreement with UAW-CIO covers North American employees.
* 1942: Production of civilian vehicles halted, diverting factory capacity to producing B-24 Liberator bombers, tanks, and other products for the war effort.
* 1943: Edsel Ford dies, Henry Ford resumes presidency for the duration of the war.
* 1945: Henry Ford II becomes president.
* 1946: The Whiz Kids – former US Army Air Force officers – hired to revitalize the Company. Automobile production resumes.
* 1948: F-1 Truck introduced
* 1949: The '49 Ford introduces all-new post-war era cars. The "Woody" station wagon is introduced.
* 1954: Thunderbird introduced as a personal luxury car with a V8. Ford begins crash testing, and opens Arizona Proving Grounds.
* 1956: $10,000 Lincoln Continental Mark II introduced. Ford goes public with common stock shares.
* 1957: Ford launches the Edsel brand of automobiles in the fall of 1957 as 1958 models. Ford is top selling brand, with 1.68 million automobiles produced.
* 1959: Ford Credit corporation formed to provide automotive financing. Ford withdraws the 1960 model Edsel's from the market in November, 1959.
* 1960: Ford Galaxie and Ford Falcon introduced.
* 1964: Ford Mustang and Ford GT40 introduced.
* 1965: Ford brand US sales exceed 2 million units.
* 1967: Ford of Europe is established.
* 1970: Ford establishes Asia Pacific operations.
* 1973: Ford US brand sales reaches all time high of 2.35 million vehicles produced
* 1976: Retractable seat belts introduced.
* 1979: Ford acquires 25% stake in Mazda.
* 1981: Lincoln Town Car is introduced as the company's top-of-the-line model. Ford Escort is introduced in the US.
* 1985: Ford Taurus introduced with revolutionary "aero design" styling.
* 1987: Ford acquires Aston Martin Lagonda and Hertz Rent-a-Car.
* 1989: Ford acquires Jaguar.
* 1990: Mazda MX-5 Miata unveiled.
* 1991: Ford Explorer introduced, making the rural/recreational SUV into a popular family vehicle.

A 1993 Ford Escort, an example of a modern Ford vehicle.
Enlarge
A 1993 Ford Escort, an example of a modern Ford vehicle.

* 1993: Ford introduces standard equipment dual airbags.
* 1996: Ford certifies all plants in 26 countries to ISO 14001 environmental standards.
* 1998: Major redesign of nearly all Ford, Mercury, Lincoln and Jaguar models. Ford introduces its first two full-size SUVs, the Expedition and the company's first luxury SUV, the Lincoln Navigator
* 1999: Ford purchases Volvo (car division). Bill Ford becomes Chairman of the Board.
* 1999: Establishes Jaguar Racing Formula One team.
* 2000: Ford purchases Land Rover from BMW.
* 2001: Retro-styled Ford Thunderbird is reintroduced.
* 2003: Ford Motor Company 100th Anniversary. The Ford GT was released to celebrate this occasion.
* 2004: Sells Jaguar Racing to Red Bull GmbH.
* 2006: Ford announces major restructuring, called The Way Forward, aimed at bringing production capacity and fixed costs into alignment with projected market share.

Sources:

* General Timeline: Ford Motor Company 2002 Annual Report
* Production figures: U.S. Automobile Production Figures

New directions for the twenty first century

In 2000, under the leadership of the current Ford chairman, William Clay (Bill) Ford, the Company stunned the industry (and pleased environmentalists) with an announcement of a planned 25 percent improvement in the average mileage of its light truck fleet — including its popular SUVs — to be completed by the 2005 calendar year. However in 2003, Ford announced that competitive market conditions, and technological and cost challenges, would prevent the company from achieving this goal. Ford did achieve significant progress toward improving fuel efficiency during 2005, with the successful introduction of the Hybrid-Electric Escape. The Escape's platform mate Mercury Mariner is also available with the hybrid-electric system in the 2006 model year—a full year ahead of schedule—due to high demand. The similar Mazda Tribute will also receive a hybrid-electric powertrain option, along with many other vehicles in the Ford vehicle line. Ford's goal is to make 250,000 hybrids a year by 2010. Other hybrids to come out will be the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan Hybrid version in 2008. There is also plans for a Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX Hybrid. The Edge and MKX are Ford's new crossover SUV's to come out for the 2007 model year. Ford also continues to study Fuel Cell-powered electric powertrains, and is currently demonstrating hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine technologies, as well as developing the next-generation hybrid-electric systems. To the extent Ford is successful in increasing the percentage of hybrid vehicles and/or fuel cell vehicles, there will be a significant decrease not only of air pollution emissions but also reduced sound levels, with notable favorable impacts upon respiratory health and decrease of noise health effects.
[edit]

2005 bond downgrade

In May 2005, several bond rating agencies downgraded the bonds of Ford Motor Company to below investment grade (so called "junk bonds"). These downgrades were a recognition of high health care costs for an aging workforce and of the dependence of the company on profits from the sales of sport utility vehicles. Due to higher fuel prices, there has been a decrease in the profits on these vehicles owing to "incentives" (in the form of rebates or low interest financing), which were needed due to declining sales. Foreign manufacturers, not having the truck manufacturing capabilities to form a platform base for similar vehicles, have instead introduced so called "crossover" SUV's — vehicles built on an automobile or minivan platform rather than a truck chassis. These vehicles have proven to be very popular in the market, and Ford has introduced such vehicles as the Escape (including a Hybrid-Electric version), along with the similar Mercury Mariner and Mazda Tribute, and the Freestyle and Volvo XC70 and Volvo XC90 crossover SUVs. In the fall of 2006, Ford is scheduled to introduce the 2007 Ford Edge, Lincoln MKX, and Mazda CX-7. These vehicles were revealed at the 2006 North American International Auto Show and other car shows.

As far as the other non-truck models, many (with the notable exception of the 2005 Mustang) have been disadvantaged in the marketplace owing to a perception by buyers that foreign manufactures (especially Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai) deliver better value in terms of fuel economy, reliability, and build quality. These perceptions are reflected in the used car market by higher values for these foreign models. For owners who frequently trade in and for those who lease their vehicles, the resale values are reflected in substantial cost differences with domestic vehicles costing more in overall costs. However, Ford hopes to reverse this trend, with the introduction of the new 2006 Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, and Lincoln Zephyr mid-size cars, which are expected to compete well in this segment.

"The Way Forward"

Ford responded to the circumstances that lead to the bond downgrade by creating a plan to reduce the company's fixed capital costs while maintaining a special focus on cars and car-based crossover vehicles. Over time, it hopes to make more of its product line profitable instead of relying on a limited portion of the products for profit. Making good profits across the product line requires that the company reduce the costs of development and production, while introducing new products that connect with consumers.

In the latter half of 2005, Chairman Bill Ford asked newly-appointed Ford Americas Division President Mark Fields to develop a plan to return the company to profitability. Fields previewed the Plan, dubbed "The Way Forward", at the December 7, 2005 board meeting of the company; and it was unveiled to the public on January 23, 2006. "The Way Forward" includes resizing the company to match current market realities, dropping some unprofitable and inefficient models, consolidating production lines, and shutting down seven vehicle assembly plants and seven parts factories. Among these are plants in St. Louis Assembly (near St. Louis), Atlanta Assembly (near Atlanta), Batavia Transmission (Batavia, Ohio), Windsor Casting (Windsor, Ontario, Canada), and Wixom Assembly (Wixom, Michigan). Two more plants were later announced for closure in 2008: the Ford Ranger Twin Cities Assembly Plant in St Paul, Minnesota, and the Ford F-series Norfolk Assembly plant in Norfolk, Virginia [2]. Up to 30,000 hourly and salaried jobs (28% of the total workforce) in North America over the next six years are expected to be eliminated [2], which is comparable to similar cutbacks previously announced at General Motors. These cutbacks are consistent with Ford's roughly 25% decline in U.S. automotive market share since the mid-late 1990s.

Ford's realignment also included the sale of its wholly-owned subsidiary, Hertz Rent-a-Car to a private equity group for $15 billion in cash and debt acquisition. The sale was completed on December 22, 2005. A joint venture with Mahindra and Mahindra Limited of India ended with the sale of Ford's 15 percent stake in 2005.

Chairman Ford became president of the company in April 2006 with the retirement of Jim Padilla. He will run the company with an executive operating committee made up of Mark Schulz, Anne Stevens, Lewis Booth, Don Leclair, and Mark Fields.
[edit]

Brands and marques

Today, Ford Motor Company manufactures automobiles under the Lincoln and Mercury brand names. In 1958, Ford introduced a new marque, the Edsel, but poor sales led to its discontinuation in 1960. Later, in 1985, the Merkur brand was introduced; it met a similar fate in 1989.

Ford has major manufacturing operations in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, China, and several other countries, including South Africa where, following divestment during apartheid, it once again has a wholly-owned subsidiary. Ford also has a cooperative agreement with Russian automaker GAZ.

Since 1989, Ford has acquired British nameplates Aston Martin, Jaguar, Daimler (div. of Jaguar), and Land Rover, and Volvo Cars from Sweden, as well as a controlling share (33.4%) of Mazda of Japan, with which it operates an American joint venture plant in Flat Rock, Michigan called Auto Alliance. It has spun off its parts division under the name Visteon. Its prestige brands, with the exception of Lincoln, are managed through its Premier Automotive Group.

Ford's non-manufacturing operations include organizations such as automotive finance operation Ford Motor Credit Company. Ford also sponsors numerous events and sports facilities around the nation, most notably Ford Center in downtown Oklahoma City and Ford Field in downtown Detroit. It is also notable that both facilities share design aesthetics in addition to their common name and similar downtown location!

Overall the Ford Motor Company controls the following car marques:

* Aston Martin
* Daimler
* Ford
* Jaguar
* Land Rover
* Lincoln
* Mazda
* Mercury
* Volvo
Global markets

Initially, Ford models sold outside the U.S. were essentially versions of those sold on the home market, but later on, models specific to Europe were developed and sold. Attempts to globalize the model line have often failed, with Europe's Ford Mondeo selling poorly in the United States, while U.S. models such as the Ford Taurus have fared poorly in Japan and Australia, even when produced in right hand drive. The small European model Ka, a hit in its home market, did not catch on in Japan, as it was not available as an automatic. The Mondeo was dropped by Ford Australia, because the segment of the market in which it competes had been in steady decline, with buyers preferring the larger local model, the Falcon. One recent exception is the Focus — The European model has sold strongly on both sides of the Atlantic.

Europe

At first, Ford in Germany and the United Kingdom built different models from one another until the late 1960s, with the Ford Escort and then the Ford Capri being common to both companies. Later on, the Ford Taunus and Ford Cortina became identical, produced in left hand drive and right hand drive respectively. Rationalisation of model ranges meant that production of many models in the UK switched to elsewhere in Europe, including Belgium and Spain as well as Germany. The Ford Sierra replaced the Taunus and Cortina in 1982, drawing criticism for its radical aerodynamic styling, which was soon given nicknames such as "Jellymould" and "The Salesman's Spaceship".

Increasingly, Ford Motor Company has looked to Ford of Europe for its "world cars," such as the Mondeo, Focus, and Fiesta, although sales of European-sourced Fords in the U.S. have been disappointing. In Asia, models from Europe are not as competitively priced as Japanese-built rivals, nor are they perceived as reliable. The Focus has been one exception to this, which has become America's best selling compact car since its launch in 2000.

In 2001, Ford ended car production in the UK. It was the first time in more than eighty years that Ford cars had not been made in Britain, although production of the Transit van continues at the company's Southampton facility, engines at Bridgend and Dagenham, and transmissions at Halewood. Development of European Ford is broadly split between Dunton in Essex (powertrain, Fiesta/Ka and commercial vehicles) and Cologne (body, chassis, electrical, Focus, Mondeo) in Germany. Ford also produced the Thames range of commercial vehicles although the use of this brand name was discontinued circa 1965. It owns the Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin car plants in Britain which are still operational. Ford's Halewood Assembly Plant was converted to Jaguar production.

Elsewhere in continental Europe, Ford assembles the Mondeo range in Genk (Belgium), Fiesta in Valencia (Spain) and Cologne (Germany), Ka in Valencia and Focus in Valencia, Saarlouis (Germany) and St. Petersberg (Russia). Transit production is in Kocaeli (Turkey), Southampton (UK), and Transit Connect in Kocaeli.

Ford also owns a joint venture production plant in Turkey. Ford-Otosan, established in the 1970s, manufactures the Transit Connect compact panel van as well as the "Jumbo" and long wheelbase versions of the full-size Transit. This new production facility was set up near Kocaeli in 2002, and its opening marked the end of Transit assembly in Genk. Another joint venture plant near Setubal in Portugal, set up in collaboration with Volkswagen, assembles the Galaxy people carrier as well as its sister ship, the VW Sharan.

Asia Pacific

In Australia and New Zealand, the popular Ford Falcon is considered the typical (if not particularly economical) family car, though it is considerably larger than the Mondeo sold in Europe. Between 1960 and 1972, the Falcon was based on a U.S. Ford of that name, but since then has been entirely designed and manufactured locally. Like its General Motors rival, the Holden Commodore, the 4.0 L Falcon retains rear wheel drive. High performance variants of the Falcon running locally-built engines produce up to 390 hp. A ute (short for "utility," known in the US as pickup truck) version is also available with a similar range of drivetrains. In addition, Ford Australia sells highly-tuned Falcon sedans and utes through its performance car division, Ford Performance Vehicles. These cars produce over 400 hp and are built in small numbers to increase their value as collectors' cars.

In both Australia and New Zealand, the Commodore and Falcon outsell all other cars. In Australia they comprise over 20% of the new car market.

Ford's presence in Asia has traditionally been much smaller. However, with the acquisition of a stake in Japanese manufacturer Mazda in 1979, Ford began selling Mazda's Familia and Capella (also known as the 323 and 626) as the Ford Laser and Telstar. The Laser was one of the most successful models sold by Ford in Australia, and outsold the Mazda 323, despite being almost identical to it. The Laser was also built in Mexico and sold in the U.S. as the Mercury Tracer, while the 1989 American Ford Escort was based on the Laser/Mazda 323. The smaller Mazda 121 was also sold in the U.S. and Asia as the Ford Festiva.

Through its relationship with Mazda, Ford also acquired a stake in South Korean manufacturer Kia, which later built the Ford Aspire for export to the United States, but later sold the company to Hyundai. Ironically, Hyundai also manufactured the Ford Cortina until the 1980s. Ford also has a joint venture with Lio Ho in Taiwan, which assembled Ford models locally since the 1970s.

Ford came to India in 1998 with its Ford Escort model, which was later replaced by locally produced Ford Ikon in 2001. It has since added Fusion, Fiesta, Mondeo and Endeavour to its product line.

South America

In South America, Ford has had to face protectionist government measures in each country, with the result that it built different models in different countries, without particular regard to rationalisation or economy of scale inherent to producing and sharing similar vehicles between the nations. In many cases, new vehicles in a country were based on those of the other manufacturers it had entered into production agreements with, or whose factories it had acquired. For example, the Corcel and Del Rey in Brazil were originally based on Renault vehicles.

In 1987, Ford merged its operations in Brazil and Argentina with those of Volkswagen to form a company called Autolatina, with which it shared models. Sales figures and profitability were disappointing, and Autolatina was dissolved in 1995. With the advent of Mercosur, the regional common market, Ford was finally able to rationalise its product line-ups in those countries. Consequently, the Ford Fiesta and Ford EcoSport are only built in Brazil, and the Ford Focus only built in Argentina, with each plant exporting in large volumes to the neighbouring countries. Models like the Ford Mondeo from Europe could now be imported completely built up. Ford of Brazil produces a pick-up truck version of the Fiesta, the Courier, which is also produced in South Africa as the Ford Bantam in right hand drive versions.

Africa and Middle East

In Africa and the Middle East, Ford's market presence has traditionally been strongest in South Africa and neighbouring countries, with only trucks being sold elsewhere on the continent. Ford in South Africa began by importing kits from Canada to be assembled at its Port Elizabeth facility. Later Ford sourced its models from the UK and Australia, with local versions of the Ford Cortina including the XR6, with a 3.0 V6 engine, and a Cortina 'bakkie' or pick-up, which was exported to the UK. In the mid-1980s Ford merged with a rival company, owned by Anglo American, to form the South African Motor Corporation (Samcor).

Following international condemnation of apartheid, Ford divested from South Africa in 1988, and sold its stake in Samcor, although it licensed the use of its brand name to the company. Samcor began to assemble Mazdas as well, which affected its product line-up, which saw the European Fords like the Escort and Sierra replaced by the Mazda-based Laser and Telstar. Ford bought a 45 per cent stake in Samcor following the demise of apartheid in 1994, and this later became, once again, a wholly owned subsidiary, the Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa. Ford now sells a local sedan version of the Fiesta (also built in India and Mexico), and the Focus and Mondeo Europe. The Falcon model from Australia was also sold in South Africa, but was dropped in 2003.

Ford's market presence in the Middle East has traditionally been even smaller, partly due to previous Arab boycotts of companies dealing with Israel. Ford and Lincoln vehicles are currently marketed in ten countries in the region. [3] Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE are the biggest markets. [4] Ford's distributor in Saudi Arabia announced in February 2003 that it had sold 100,000 Ford and Lincoln vehicles since commencing sales in November 1986. Half of the Ford/Lincoln vehicles sold in that country were Ford Crown Victorias. [5] In 2004, Ford sold 30,000 units in the region, falling far short of General Motors' 88,852 units and Nissan Motors' 75,000 units.

Alternate fuel vehicles

Bill Ford was one of the first top industry executives to make regular use of an battery electric vehicle, a Ford Ranger EV, while the company contracted with the United States Postal Service to deliver electric postal vans based on the Ranger EV platform. Many Ford vehicles now sport an emblem — a green leaf springing from a curving road-like twig — symbolic of the new "green" commitment to preserve the environment and reduce resource consumption, while delivering safe, economical, and effective products to the motoring public. Vehicles with this emblem are generally alternative fuel or flexible-fuel vehicles. The alternative fuel vehicles, such as some versions of the Crown Victoria especially in fleet and taxi service, operate on compressed natural gas - or CNG. Some CNG vehicles have duel fuel tanks - one for gasoline, the other for CNG - the same engine can operate on either fuel via a selector switch. Flexible fuel vehicles are designed to operate smoothly using a wide range of available fuel mixtures - from pure gasoline, to ethanol-gasoline blends such as E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline). Part of the challenge of successful marketing alternative and flexible fuel vehicles, is the general lack of establishment of sufficient infrastructure (fueling stations), which would be essential for these vehicles to be attractive to a wide range of consumers. Significant efforts to ramp up production and distribution of E85 fuels are underway and expanding

Current Ford Flexible Fuel Vehicles:

* Ford F-150
* Ford Crown Victoria
* Ford Focus / Focus C-Max
* Ford Taurus
* Ford Ranger
* Mercury Grand Marquis
* Lincoln Town Car

Ford was third to market with a hybrid electric vehicle — the Ford Escape Hybrid, which also represents the first hybrid Crossover SUV to market. The Hybrid Escape will also be the first hybrid vehicle to market with a Flexible Fuel capability to run on E85 [9]. The company is also on track to selling 250,000 hybrids a year by 2010.

Current and upcoming Ford hybrid vehicles:

* 2004– Ford Escape Hybrid
* 2006– Mercury Mariner
* 2008– Ford Fusion/Mercury Milan
* 2009– Ford Five Hundred/Mercury Montego
* 2009– Ford Edge/Lincoln MKX

Motorsports

Ford has been active in a number of forms of motor sports.

NASCAR

Ford is one of four manufacturers in the three NASCAR series: Nextel Cup, Busch Series, and Craftsman Truck Series. Major teams include Roush Racing and Robert Yates Racing. Ford's racing teams debut the Fusion race car, replacing the Taurus, at the 2006 Daytona 500.

Trans-Am

Ford has a storied history in the Trans-Am series from the 1970s through today having won many championships and races with its Ford Mustang.

Drag racing

John Force has piloted his Drag Ford Mustang to several NHRA funny-car titles in recent seasons.

Indianapolis 500

Ford powered racing cars won the Indianapolis 500 17 times between 1965 and 1996.
Rubens Barrichello driving for the Stewart Grand Prix team in 1998.
Rubens Barrichello driving for the Stewart Grand Prix team in 1998.

Formula One

Ford was heavily involved in Formula One for many years, and supplied engines to a large number of teams from 1967 until 2004. These engines were designed and manufactured by Cosworth, the racing division of which was owned by Ford from 1998 to 2004. Ford-badged engines won 176 Grands Prix between 1967 and 2003 for teams such as Team Lotus and McLaren. Ford entered Formula One as a constructor in 2000 under the Jaguar Racing name, after buying out the Stewart Grand Prix team which had been its primary 'works' team in the series since 1997. Jaguar achieved little success in Formula One, and after a turbulent five seasons, Ford pulled out of the category after the 2004 season, selling both Jaguar Racing (which became Red Bull Racing) and Cosworth (to Gerald Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven)

Rally

Ford has also been active many years in the World Rally Championship, and has used various versions of the Ford Focus WRC since 1999 to much success. Ford has a very long history in rally racing, having previously run the Ford RS200 and many versions of the Ford Escort to great success.

Sports cars

Ford sports cars have always been visible in the world of endurance racing. Most notably the GT40 won the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans four times in the 1960s and still stands today as one of the all-time greatest racing cars.

Ford currently holds the manufacturers title (2005) for Grand-American Racing Cup with the FR500C Mustang race car.

Touring cars

Ford has campaigned touring cars such as the Focus, Falcon, and Contour/Mondeo and the Sierra Cosworth in many different series throughout the years. Notably the Mondeo finished 1,2,3 in the British Touring Car Championship in 2000 and the Falcon finished 1,2,3 in the Australian V8 Supercar Series in 2005.

Formula Ford

This formula for single seater cars without wings, and originally on road tyres, was conceived in 1966 in the UK as an entry level formula for racing drivers. Many of today's racing drivers started their car racing careers in this category.

External links

* Official Ford Motor Company Website
* Ford Media web site - press release information
* Ford History site
* Ford 100th Anniversary History Site
* Ford Vehicles Home Page
* FordEurope.net - independent portal site about Ford of Europe (By:D-fens Referencing:Rg)
* Ford Racing home page - Racing News and fan information site

Source:-Wikipedia

Chevron Corp

2006-06-01T08:16:00.000-09:00

Type Public

Founded 1879 (Pico Canyon, California)

Location San Ramon, California

Key people David O'Reilly, CEO & Chairman

Industry Oil and Gasoline

Products Petrochemical

Revenue $174.10 billion USD (2005}

Employees 61,533

Website Chevron Corp

Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) is one of the world's largest global energy companies. Headquartered in San Ramon, California, USA and active in more than 180 countries, it is engaged in every aspect of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production; refining, marketing and transport; chemicals manufacturing and sales; and power generation. Chevron is one of the five "supermajors," along with ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Total.

Chevron was originally known as Standard Oil of California, or Socal, and was formed amid the antitrust breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. It was one of the "Seven Sisters" that dominated the world oil industry during the early 20th century.

In 1984, the merger between Chevron and Gulf Oil became the largest merger in world history at the time. Because of its size, Gulf divested many of its worldwide operating subsidiaries and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States to satisfy US antitrust requirements. In 2001, the former Chevron corporation merged with Texaco to form ChevronTexaco. On May 9, 2005, ChevronTexaco announced it would drop the Texaco moniker and return to the Chevron name. Texaco will remain as a brand under the Chevron Corporation. On August 19, 2005, Chevron merged with the Unocal Corporation, a move which, because of Unocal's large South East Asian geothermal operations, made Chevron the largest producer of geothermal energy in the world.

Overview

Chevron employs approximately 53,000 people worldwide and had approximately 12 billion barrels (1.9 km³) of oil-equivalent net proved reserves at December 31, 2003. Daily production in 2003 was 2.5 million net oil-equivalent barrels (400,000 m³) per day. In addition, the company had a global refining capacity at year-end 2003 of 2.2 million barrels (350,000 m³) of crude oil per day. The company has a worldwide marketing network in 84 countries with approximately 24,000 retail sites, including those of affiliate companies. The company also has interests in 13 power generating assets in the United States, Asia, and Europe.

The company marked its 125th anniversary in 2004, tracing its roots to an oil discovery at Pico Canyon, north of Los Angeles. This find led to the formation, in 1879, of the Pacific Coast Oil Company, the predecessor of Chevron Corporation. Another side of the genealogical chart points to the 1901 founding of The Texas Fuel Company, a modest enterprise that started out in three rooms of a corrugated iron building in Beaumont, Texas. This company would later become known as Texaco.

Chevron was headquartered in San Francisco for nearly a century before it relocated its headquarters across the bay to San Ramon, CA. Chevron's headquarters buildings at 555 and 575 Market Street, built in the mid-1960's, in San Francisco were sold in December 1999. Its original headquarters were at 200 Bush St., built in 1912.

Chevron is the owner of the Standard Oil trademark in a 16-state area of the western and southeastern United States. To maintain ownership of the mark, the company owns and operates one Standard-branded Chevron station in each state of its area.

Chevron is the only brand of gas used by several automakers when testing vehicles, including General Motors and Toyota. (Ford does as well despite a strategic alliance with BP.) Chevron also has often had one of the highest brand loyalty rates for gasoline in America, with only Shell and BP (through Amoco) having equally high rates.

Energy technologies

The company also develops and commercializes advanced energy technologies, including fuel cells, photovoltaics, and advanced batteries, and is active in research and development efforts to utilize hydrogen as a fuel for transport and power. Additionally, the company is investing in the field of nanotechnology, evaluating a new class of molecular building blocks that potentially may be useful in many industries.

Marketing Brands

Fuel

* Chevron
* Standard Oil (in limited circumstances)
* Texaco (In the United States, Shell may use the Texaco brand until 1 July 2006; Texaco stations that Chevron Corporation supplies will soon advertise "Texaco with Techron")
* Caltex

Lubricants

* Delo (sold by Caltex and Chevron)
* Havoline (sold by Caltex and Texaco)
* Revtex (sold by Caltex)
* Ursa (sold by Texaco)

Fuel Additives

* Techron - Chevron, Texaco (phased in during 2005), Caltex (phased in during 2006 and later)
* Clean System 3 - Texaco (phased out during 2005 in favor of Techron)

Promotional

* Chevron Cars

Board of directors

As of November 2005

* David J. O'Reilly (Chairman & CEO)
* Samual Armacost
* Robert Denham
* Robert Eaton
* Sam Ginn
* Carla Anderson Hills
* Franklyn Jenifer
* Sam Nunn
* Donald Rice
* Peter Robertson
* Charles Shoemate
* Ronald Sugar
* Carl Ware

Criticism

In 1992, 777 women filed a class-action suit against Chevron for discrimination and tolerating sexual harassment at Chevron Information Technology Company in San Ramon. In 1995, they settled the harassment claim for $2.2 million. Chevron settled the rest of the charges for $7.42 million. [citation needed]

"Mother's Day Massacre" : In 1993, the day before Mother's Day, Ortho, a joint division of Chevron and Monsanto, fired more than 60 sales people, 90 percent of them over 40-years-old. Forty-three of the employees sued Chevron and Monsanto for age discrimination. They settled for $18.3 million. [citation needed]

On May 28, 1998, as activists were staging a demonstration on an oil platform in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, Nigerian police and soldiers, instead of Chevron representatives (as the activists expected), were flown in with Chevron helicopters. Soldiers shot at the activists and subsequently two activists (Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu) died from their wounds [6]. The Nigerian government is reportedly 80% dependent upon oil production and is condemned by many for its reported [citation needed] treatment of environmentalists.

Chevron had ten refinery accidents in ten years at their refinery in Richmond, Ca. The 10th accident occurred on 25 March 1999, when the refinery exploded. Hundreds of people living nearby complained of difficulty breathing and vomiting afterwards. Chevron's warning system was delayed for up to a half-hour after the blast. [citation needed]

Communities for a Better Environment sued Chevron, Unocal (also an initiative funder), and other oil companies for polluting Latino and African-American communities in Los Angeles.

General Information

* Chevron Official Site
* Texaco Official Site
* Unocal Official Site
* ChevronTexaco 125th Anniversary
* Chevron Real Issues Advertising

Source:-Wikipedia

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)

2006-05-13T14:16:00.000-09:00

Type :-Public (NYSE: IBM)

Founded :-1888, incorporated 1911

Location :-Armonk, New York, USA

Key people:-

Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman & CEO
Dan Fortin, President (Canada)
Frank Kern, President (Asia Pacific)
Nick Donofrio, EVP (Innovation & Technology)
Colleen Arnold, President IOT EMEA North-East
Dominique Cerutti, President IOT EMEA South-West
Mark Loughridge SVP & CFO

Industry :-Computer hardware, IT Services, Consulting

Revenue :-$91.1 billion USD (2005)

Operating Income :-$13.7 billion USD (2005)

Net Income :- $7.9 billion USD (2005)

Employees :-329,373 (2005)

Website :- IBM

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a computer technology firm headquartered in Armonk, NY, USA. The company, which was founded in 1888 and incorporated June 15, 1911, manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, infrastructure services, hosting services, and consulting services. IBM is the biggest information technology company in the world and holds more patents than any other tech company.

With almost 332,000 employees worldwide and revenues of $91 billion annually (figures from 2005), IBM is also one of the few with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. It has engineers and consultants in over 170 countries and development laboratories located all over the world, in all segments of computer science and information technology; some of them are pioneers in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.

In recent years, services and consulting revenues have been larger than those from manufacturing. Samuel J. Palmisano was elected CEO on January 29, 2002 after having led IBM's Global Services, and helping it to become a business with a $100 billion in backlog in 2004[1]. Palmisano replaced Louis V. Gerstner, who had held the job from 1992 to 2002, taking over from John Akers who was fired because of the company's serious financial problems.

In 2002 the company strengthened its business advisory capabilities by acquiring the consulting arm of professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. The company is increasingly focused on business solution driven consulting, services and software, with emphasis also on high value chips and hardware technologies; as of 2005 it employs about 195,000 technical professionals. That total includes about 350 Distinguished Engineers and 60 IBM Fellows, its most senior engineers.

IBM Research has eight laboratories, all located in the Northern Hemisphere, with five of those locations outside of the United States. IBM employees have won five Nobel Prizes. In the USA, they have earned four Turing Awards, five National Medals of Technology, and five National Medals of Science, and outside the USA, many equivalents.

As a chip maker IBM is among the Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Sales Leaders.

Current business activities

In 2002, IBM announced the beginning of a $10 billion program to research and implement the infrastructure technology necessary to be able to provide supercomputer-level resources "on demand" to all businesses as a metered utility. This program will be implemented over the coming years.

In recent years IBM has steadily increased its patent portfolio, which is valuable for cross-licensing with other companies. In every year from 1993 until 2005, IBM has been granted significantly more U.S. patents than any other company. That thirteen-year period has resulted in over 31,000 patents for which IBM is the primary assignee

Protection of the company's intellectual property has grown into a business in its own right, generating over $10 billion dollars [3] to the bottom line for the company during this period.

A 2003 Forbes article quotes the head of IBM Research, who suggested a $1 billion in profit just for the research staff; however, they probably generate the bulk of new inventions in the company.

In 2005, IBM sold its PC division to China-based Lenovo. As part of the agreement, Lenovo moved its headquarters to New York State. IBM owns a significant stake (about 19%) in Lenovo. Starting from the date of the acquisition, Lenovo is permitted five years' use of the IBM and Thinkpad trademarks.

Of late, IBM has shifted much of its focus to the provision of business consulting & re-engineering services from its hardware & technology focus. The new IBM has enhanced global delivery capabilities in consulting, software and technology based process services - and this change is reflected in its top-line.

Culture

IBM has often been described as having a sales-centric or a sales-oriented business culture. Traditionally, many of its executives and general managers would be chosen from its sales force. In addition, middle and top management would often be enlisted to give direct support to salesmen in the process of making sales to important customers.

For most of the 20th century, a blue suit, white shirt and dark tie was the public uniform of IBM employees. But by the 1990s, IBM relaxed these codes; the dress and behavior of its employees does not differ appreciably from that of their counterparts in large technology companies.

In 2003, IBM embarked on an ambitious project to rewrite company values using its "Jam" technology -- Intranet-based online discussions on key business issues for a limited time, involving more than 50,000 employees over 3 days in this case. Jam technology includes sophisticated text analysis software (eClassifier) to mine online comments for themes, and Jams have now been used six times internally at IBM. As a result of the 2003 Jam, the company values were updated to reflect three modern business, marketplace and employee views: "Dedication to every client's success", "Innovation that matters - for our company and for the world", "Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships".

In 2004, another Jam was conducted in which more than 52,000 employees exchanged best practices for 72 hours. This event was focused on finding actionable ideas to support implementation of the values identified previously. A new post-Jam Ratings event was developed to allow IBMers to select key ideas that support the values. (For further information, see Harvard Business Review, December 2004, interview with IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano.)

IBM's culture has been recently influenced by the open source movement. The company invests billions of dollars in services and software based on Linux. This includes over 300 Linux kernel developers. IBM's open source involvement has not been trouble-free, however; see SCO v. IBM.

Diversity and workforce issues

IBM's efforts to promote workforce diversity and equal opportunity date back at least to World War I, when the company hired disabled veterans. IBM is the only technology company ranked in Working Mother Magazine's Top 10 for 2004.

The company has traditionally resisted labor union organizing, although unions represent some IBM workers outside the United States. Alliance@IBM, part of the Communications Workers of America, is trying to organize IBM in the U.S.

In the 1990s, two major pension program changes, including a conversion to a cash balance plan, resulted in an employee class action lawsuit alleging age discrimination. IBM employees won the lawsuit and arrived at a partial settlement, although appeals are still underway.

Historically IBM has had a good reputation of long-term staff retention with few large scale layoffs. In more recent years there have been a number of broad sweeping cuts to the workforce as IBM attempts to adapt to changing market conditions and a declining profit base. After posting weaker than expected revenues in the first quarter of 2005, IBM eliminated 14,500 positions from its workforce, predominantly in Europe. On June 8, 2005, IBM Canada Ltd. eliminated approximately 700 positions. There has also been a steadily increasing movement of labor to cheaper offshore countries such as the Philippines, Costa Rica, India and China.

On October 10, 2005, IBM became the first major company in the world to formally commit to not using genetic information in its employment decisions. This came just a few months after IBM announced its support of the National Geographic's Genographic Project.

History

Early years

IBM's history dates back decades before the development of electronic computers – before that it developed punched card data processing equipment. It originated as the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation, which was incorporated on June 15, 1911 in Endicott, New York a few miles west of Binghamton, New York.

This company was a merger of three separate corporations; Tabulating Machine Corporation of Washington D.C, the Computing Scale Corporation of Dayton, Ohio and the International Time Recording Company of Endicott, NY. The president of the Tabulating Machine Corporation at that time was Herman Hollerith, who had founded the company in 1896.

The key person behind the merger was financier, Charles Flint who brought together the founders of the three companies to propose a merger. Flint remained a member of the board of CTR until his retirement in 1930 [1].

Thomas J. Watson Sr., the founder of IBM, became General Manager of CTR in 1914 and President in 1915. In 1917, the CTR entered the Canadian market under the name of International Business Machines Co., Limited. On February 14, 1924, CTR changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation.

The companies that merged to form CTR manufactured a wide range of products, including employee time-keeping systems, weighing scales, automatic meat slicers, and most importantly for the development of the computer, punched card equipment. Over time CTR came to focus purely on the punched card business, and ceased its involvement in the other activities.

World War II and Holocaust era

In 2001 author Edwin Black published IBM and the Holocaust, a book alleging that IBM's New York headquarters and CEO Thomas J. Watson assisted its overseas subsidiaries in providing the Third Reich with punch card machines knowing that the machines could help the Nazis prosecute their "Final Solution." The book claims that, with New York's cooperation, IBM's Geneva office and Dehomag, its German subsidiary, were intimately involved in supporting Nazi atrocities. Black also alleges that these machines made the Nazis much more efficient in their efforts. The 2003 documentary film The Corporation also explores this issue.

IBM denies these allegations and states that the Nazis seized control of Dehomag before World War II. Holocaust-related plaintiffs voluntarily withdrew one lawsuit against IBM in U.S. courts, but there is one case still pending as of early 2006 in Swiss courts. IBM says the case is "without merit."

During World War II IBM manufactured the Browning Automatic Rifle and the M1 Carbine. Allied military forces widely utilized IBM's tabulating equipment for military accounting, logistics, and other War-related purposes. During the War IBM also built the Harvard Mark I for the U.S. Navy, the first large-scale automatic digital computer in the U.S.

Airforce and airline projects

In the 1950s, IBM became a chief contractor for developing computers for the United States Air Force's automated defense systems. Working on the SAGE anti-aircraft system, IBM gained access to crucial research being done at MIT, working on the first real-time, digital computer (which included many other advancements such as an integrated video display, magnetic core memory, light guns, the first effective algebraic computer language, analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion techniques, digital data transmission over telephone lines, duplexing, multiprocessing, and networks). IBM built fifty-six SAGE computers at the price of $30 million each, and at the peak of the project devoted more than 7,000 employees (20% of its then workforce) to the project. More valuable to the company in the long run than the profits, however, was the access to cutting-edge research into digital computers being done under military auspices. IBM neglected, however, to gain an even more dominant role in the nascent industry by allowing the RAND Corporation to take over the job of programming the new computers, because, according to one project participant (Robert P. Crago), "we couldn't imagine where we could absorb two thousand programmers at IBM when this job would be over someday." IBM would use its experience designing massive, integrated real-time networks with SAGE to design its SABRE airline reservation system, which met with much success.

Successes of the 1960s

IBM was the largest of the eight major computer companies (with UNIVAC, Burroughs, Scientific Data Systems, Control Data Corporation, General Electric, RCA and Honeywell) through most of the 1960s. People in this business would talk of "IBM and the seven dwarfs", given the much smaller size of the other companies or of their computer divisions. When only Burroughs, Univac, NCR and Honeywell produced mainframes, a bit later, people talked of "IBM and the B.U.N.C.H.". Most of those companies are now long gone as IBM competitors, except for Unisys, which is the result of multiple mergers that included UNIVAC and Burroughs. NCR and Honeywell dropped out of the general mainframe and mini sector and concentrated on lucrative niche markets, NCR's being cash registers (hence the name, National Cash Register) and Honeywell becoming the market leader in thermostats. General Electric remains one of the world's largest companies, but no longer operates in the computer market. The IBM computer range that earned it its position in the market at that time is still growing today. It was originally known as the IBM System/360 and, in far more modern 64-bit form, is now known as the IBM System z9 (often referred to as "IBM mainframes").
IBM Logo: 1956-1972

IBM's success in the mid-1960s led to inquiries as to IBM antitrust violations by the U.S. Department of Justice, which filed a complaint for the case U.S. v. IBM in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on January 17, 1969. The suit alleged that IBM violated the Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the general purpose electronic digital computer system market, specifically computers designed primarily for business. Litigation continued until 1983, and had a significant impact on the company's practices.

Recent history

On January 19, 1993 IBM announced a $4.97 billion loss for the 1992 fiscal year, which was at that time the largest single-year corporate loss in United States history. Since that loss, IBM has made major changes in its business activities, shifting its focus significantly away from components and hardware and towards software and services.

In 2004, IBM announced the proposed sale of its PC business to Chinese computer maker Lenovo, which is partially owned by the Chinese government, for $650 million US in cash and $600 million US in Lenovo stock. The deal was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States in March of 2005, and completed in May of 2005. IBM will have a 19% stake in Lenovo, which will move its headquarters to New York State and appoint an IBM executive as its chief executive officer. The company will retain the right to use certain IBM brand names for an initial period of five years.

IBM is in the news again, as IBM is apart of the Cell Project, a revolutionary, next generation processor architecture designed for multimedia, hi-def and gaming content.

Facts and trivia

* The IBM Logo was designed by Paul Rand.
* IBM's Software Group, if it were a separate entity, would be the second largest software company in the world, behind only Microsoft in total revenue. IBM SWG groups its products into five brands: DB2 (information management), Rational (software development lifecycle), Lotus (collaboration), Tivoli (systems management and security), and WebSphere (application as well as data integration and middleware). SWG contributes as much profit to the company as its huge services division (IBM Global Services).
* IBM's famous mainframe business is growing quite robustly.
* IBM invented many of the core technologies used in all forms of computing, including the first hard disk drive and the Winchester hard disk drive, the cursor (on computer screens), Dynamic RAM (DRAM), the relational database, Thin Film recording heads, RISC architecture, and the floppy disk. The infamous Control-Alt-Delete keystroke (David Bradley, 2001: "I invented it, but it was Bill [Gates] who made it famous"), also invented at IBM, is still frequently used on PCs running the Microsoft Windows operating systems.
* The first black employee was hired in 1899 by the Computing Scale Corporation, one of the companies that formed IBM.
* IBM began hiring women to work as professional systems service staff in 1935. Thomas J. Watson Sr. wrote: "Men and women will do the same kind of work for equal pay. They will have the same treatment, the same responsibilities and the same opportunities for advancement."
* IBM made clocks until selling its time division in 1958. Other past IBM products: fax machines, dictation equipment, photocopiers, meat and grocery scales, cheese slicers, telephones and telephone/data service (Rolm and Advantis/IBM Global Network), wireless data service (Ardis), and factory employee timecard systems.
* In 1944, IBM was the first corporation to support the United Negro College Fund.
* In 1953, IBM published the first U.S. corporate mandate on equal employment opportunity, stating that the company would hire people based on their ability, "regardless of race, color or creed". Sexual orientation was added to the nondiscrimination policy in 1984. Genetic makeup was added in 2005.
* In 1982, the IBM Personal Computer was awarded Time Magazine's "Man of the Year" award.
* IBM invented the USB flash drive in 1998 but did not patent it.
* Whilst IBM did not invent the personal computer, architectures cloned from its design for the IBM PC (which relied on third-party componentry) became the industry standard and are now often simply called the PC. The IBM PC was introduced on August 12, 1981. Microsoft and Intel became monopoly suppliers of two of the key components of PC-compatible systems. IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo in December, 2004.
* The IBM iSeries minicomputer (in its 24-year history also variously known as System i5, AS/400 and System/38) is the world's largest-selling computer family, if PC-type machines are excluded. It was the first successful 64-bit machine. It has been calculated that, if the Rochester, Minnesota facility that produces the machine were independent, it would be the third largest computer company in the world.
* In 2004, for the twelfth consecutive year, IBM was awarded the greatest number of patents by the USPTO. IBM received 3,248 patents that year[7].
* If you step backward one letter in the alphabet for each letter of "IBM" you will arrive at "HAL." Some think that this bears a striking similarity to the name of the fictional computer "HAL" featured in the Arthur C. Clarke book and film "2001, A Space Odyssey." However, Arthur C. Clarke has stated that any connection was purely coincidental, and that the name HAL 9000 was derived from the term 'Heuristic ALgorithm.'
* The "ThinkPad" name for IBM's (former) notebook computers was brought up after an IBM researcher went to a coffee break and took a notepad which had the word "THINK" on it. Subsequently they conceived the idea of a small, portable tool which was able to read, write, work and think, which eventually turned out to be their first "ThinkPad" notebook computer back in 1992.
* IBM arrived in 1965 to Raleigh-Durham's Research Triangle Park. In 2005, IBM celebrated the 40th anniversary of its Research Triangle Park facility. In 2003, some 13,300 people worked at IBM RTP making it IBM's largest. RTP is still IBM's largest site as of 2005 with 11,000 employees. IBM occupies 39 buildings in metropolitan Raleigh-Durham and owns 750 acres in Research Triangle Park.
* IBM is playing a major role in shifting of information technology and consulting work from the developed countries to "offshore" destinations like India, China and Brazil. IBM India has grown rapidly in employee numbers and now accounts for almost one-sixth of the total IBM employees worldwide.
* The 2005 Annual Report for IBM estimates that the Medicare prescription drug program will lead to the company receiving a $400 million subsidy during the six-year period beginning in 2006)[8].
* The history of Grace Hopper, considered the "mother of the COBOL language" (COmmon Business Oriented Language) and her history and relevance of that computer language, related to International Business Machines.

Acquisitions

* 1889 Bundy Manufacturing Company incorporated.
* 1891 Computing Scale Company incorporated.
* 1893 Dey Patents Company (Dey Time Registers) incorporated.
* 1894 Willard & Frick Manufacturing Company (Rochester, New York) incorporated.
* 1896 Detroit Automatic Scale Company incorporated.
* 1896 Tabulating Machine Company incorporated.
* 1899 Standard Time Stamp Company acquired by Bundy Manufacturing Company.
* 1900 Willard & Frick Manufacturing Company (Rochester) acquired by International Time Recording Company.
* 1901 Chicago Time-Register Company acquired by International Time Recording Company.
* 1901 Dayton Moneyweight Scale Company acquired by Computing Scale Company.
* 1901 Detroit Automatic Scale Company acquired by Computing Scale Company.
* 1902 Bundy Manufacturing Company acquired by International Time Recording Company.
* 1907 Dey Time Registers acquired by International Time Recording Company.
* 1908 Syracuse Time Recording Company acquired by International Time Recording Company.
* 1911 Computing Scale Company acquired by Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).
* 1911 International Time Recording Company acquired by Computing-Time-Recording Company (C-T-R).
* 1911 Tabulating Machine Company acquired by Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).
* 1917 American Automatic Scale Company acquired by Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R) as International Scale Company.
* 1917 C-T-R opens in Canada as International Business Machines Company Limited.
* 1921 Pierce Accounting Machine Company (asset purchase).
* 1921 Ticketograph Company (of Chicago).
* 1924 C-T-R renamed International Business Machines Corporation.
* 1930 Automatic Accounting Scale Company.
* 1932 National Counting Scale Company.
* 1933 Electromatic Typewriters Inc. (See: IBM Electromatic typewriter)
* 1941 Munitions Manufacturing Corporation.
* August, 1959 Pierce Wire Recorder Corporation.
* 1984 ROLM.
* 1986 RealCom Communications Corporation.
* 1995 Lotus Development Corporation for $3.5 billion.
* 1996 Tivoli Systems for $743 million.
* 1997 Software Artistry for $200 million.
* 1997 Unison Software.
* 1998 CommQuest Technologies.
* 1999 Mylex Corporation.
* 1999 Sequent Computer Systems for $810 million.
* 2001 Informix Software (a purchase of assets rather than a true acquisition) for $1.0 billion.
* 2001 Mainspring Inc. for $80 million.
* 2002
o PricewaterhouseCoopers' Consulting for $3.5 billion (recalculated by IBM in August 2003 as $3.9 billion).
o January, Crossworlds.
o September, Holosofx.
* 2003
o March, Rational Software Corporation for $2.1 billion.
o July, Presence Online, Aptrix.
o October, CrossAccess.
* 2004
o Maersk Data & DMData.
o March, Logicalis Australia (renamed to Cerulean Solutions in April 2005) and Logical CSI New Zealand.
o April, Candle Corp., Daksh eServices in India.
o April, Schlumberger Business Continuity Services (Renamed to Continuity Services Ltd)
o July, Alphablox.
o July, Cyanea Systems.
o August, Venetica.
o October, Systemcorp.
* 2005
o February, Corio crio for $211 million.
o April, Ascential Software for approximately $1.1 billion in cash.
o May, Gluecode.
o July, PureEdge.
o August, DWL.
o October, DataPower.
o November, Network Solutions Pvt Ltd, India
o December, Bowstreet.
o December, Micromuse for $865 million.
* 2006
o January, Classic Blue.
o May, Build Forge

Spinoffs

* 1934 Dayton Scale Division is sold to the Hobart Manufacturing Company.
* 1942 Ticketograph Division is sold to the National Postal Meter Company.
* 1958 Time Equipment Division is sold to the Simplex Time Recorder Company.
* Taligent, a joint software venture with Apple Computer.
* Prodigy, formerly a joint venture with Sears.
* AT&T Business Internet
* ARDIS mobile packet network, a joint venture with Motorola. Now Motient.
* 1991 Lexmark (keyboards, typewriters, and printers). IBM Retained a 10% interest. Lexmark has sold its keyboard and typewriter businesses. IBM Printing Systems now competes with Lexmark.
* 1996 Celestica Celestica Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS).
* 2003 Hitachi Global Storage Technologies now provides many of the hardware storage devices formerly provided by IBM, including IBM Harddrives & The Microdrive. IBM continues to develop storage systems, including Tape Backup, Storage software, Enterprise storage, etc.
* December, 2004 Lenovo acquires 90% interest in IBM Personal Systems Group, 10,000 employees and $9 billion in revenue.

Projects

BlueEyes

BlueEyes[9] is the name of a human recognition venture initiated by IBM to allow people to interact with computers in a more natural manner. The technology aims to enable devices to recognize and use natural input, such as facial expressions. The initial developments of this project include scroll mice and other input devices that sense the user's pulse, monitor his or her facial expressions, and the movement of his or her eyelids.

alphaWorks

Free software available at alphaWorks, IBM's source for emerging software technology:

1. Flexible Internet Evaluation Report Architecture: A highly flexible architecture for the design, display, and reporting of Internet surveys.
2. History Flow Visualization Application: A tool for visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and the interactions of multiple collaborating authors. Examples for Wikipedia can be seen here and here.
3. IBM Performance Simulator for Linux on POWER: A tool that provides users of Linux on Power a set of performance models

Toyota Motor Corporation

2006-04-17T08:32:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NYSE: TM)

Founded 1933

Location Toyota, Aichi, Japan

Key people

Hiroshi Okuda, Chairman
Katsuaki Watanabe, President

Industry Automobile Manufacturing

Products Toyota, Lexus, and Scion brand cars

Affiliated products: Daihatsu keicars, Fuji Heavy Industries automobiles and aerospace, Hino trucks and buses

Revenue 173 Billion (U.S.) (2005)

Employees 264,410

Website Toyota Motor Corporation

Toyota Motor Corporation (トヨタ自動車株式会社, Toyota Jidōsha Kabushiki-gaisha?) (TYO: 7203.T , NYSE: TM, LSE: TYT), or TMC, is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures automobiles. The headquarters of Toyota is located in Toyota, Aichi, Japan. Toyota also provides Financial Servicesand participates in other lines of business. In the United States, it manufactures vehicles under the brand names Toyota, Scion and Lexus. Toyota also owns majority stakes in Daihatsu and Hino, and 8.7% of Fuji Heavy Industries, which manufactures Subaru vehicles.

Toyota produces an estimated eight million vehicles per year, about a million fewer than the number produced by GM. The company dominates its home market with about 40% of all new cars registered in 2004 being Toyotas. Toyota also has a large market share in both the United States and Europe. It has significant market shares in several fast-growing South East Asian countries[1]. In the 2005 Forbes Global 2000 it was the tenth-largest company in the world.

Origins

The story of the Toyota Motor Corporation began in September 1933 when Toyoda Automatic Loom created a new division devoted to the production of automobiles under the direction of the founder's son, Kiichiro Toyoda. Soon thereafter, the division produced its first Type A Engine in 1934, which was used in the first Model A1 passenger car in May 1935 and the G1 truck in August 1935. Production of the Model AA passenger car started in 1936.

Although the Toyota Group is best known today for its cars, it is still in the textile business and still makes automatic looms (fully computerized, of course), and electric sewing machines which are available worldwide.

Toyota Motor Co. was established as an independent company in 1937. Although the founding family name is Toyoda (豊田), the company name was changed to:

Signify the separation of the founders' work life from home life;
Simplify the pronunciation, and
Give the company a happy beginning. Toyota (トヨタ) is considered luckier than Toyoda (豊田) in Japan, where eight is regarded as a lucky number, and eight is the number of strokes it takes to write Toyota in Katakana. In Chinese, the company and its vehicles are still referred to by the equivalent characters (Traditional Chinese: 豐田; Simplified Chinese: 丰田), with Chinese reading.
During the Pacific War the company was dedicated to truck production for the Imperial Army. Because of severe shortages in Japan, military trucks were kept as simple as possible. For example, the trucks had only one headlight on the center of the hood.

Fortunately for Toyota, the war ended shortly before a scheduled allied bombing run on the Toyota factories in Aichi.

Commercial passenger car production started in 1947 with the model SA. In 1950 a separate sales company Toyota Motor Sales Co. was established (which lasted until July 1982). In April 1956 the Toyopet dealer chain was established.

Worldwide presence

Toyota has factories all over the world, manufacturing or assembling vehicles for local markets, including its most popular model, the Corolla. Toyota has manufacturing or assembly plants in the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Poland, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, and more recently Pakistan, India, Argentina, Czech Republic, Mexico and Venezuela.

Toyota invests a great amount of research into cleaner-burning vehicles such as the Toyota Prius, based on technology such as the Hybrid Synergy Drive. In 2002, Toyota successfully road-tested a new version of the RAV4 which ran on a Hydrogen fuel cell. Scientific American called the company its Business Leader of the Year in 2003 for commercializing an affordable hybrid car.

In 2003, Toyota brought two of their popular cars from Japan (including the bB) to America, and created a new badge, called Scion, meaning a descendant or heir. These cars are targeted towards the young, and young-at-heart. Both models, the xA (known in Japan as the Toyota ist) and xB (known in Japan as the Toyota bB) are powered by a 1.5L DOHC I4 engine. A third model, the Scion tC, was introduced in 2004. Instead of importing an existing model from Japan as was done with the xA and xB, the tC was designed specifically for the North American market, using the four-cylinder engine and transmissions from the Toyota Camry.

Toyota is also famous in industry for its manufacturing philosophy, called the Toyota Production System. This system is copied worldwide by many manufacturing companies.

Auto racing

World Rally Championship

Toyota has also been successful in racing, especially in Rally with the Toyota Celica as well as the Toyota Corolla.

Championship Auto Racing Teams

Toyota raced in CART (a.k.a. the Champ Car World Series) from 1996 to 2002. Its early years in the series were marked by struggles. Toyota-powered cars, campaigned by the All-American Racers and PPI Motorsports teams, languished at the back of the grid, slow and unreliable. Toyota didn't even lead a lap until Alex Barron led 12 laps at the Vancouver street circuit in September 1998. Toyota started seeing its fortunes improve in 1999 as Scott Pruett took pole position at the final race of the season at the California Speedway. The next year, Juan Pablo Montoya gave Toyota its first-ever CART win at the Milwaukee Mile, the first of 5 races won by Toyota-powered cars that year. Toyota-powered cars won six races in 2001. In 2002, Toyota's final year in the championship, it turned things around completely from its bleak debut. Toyota won the Manufacturer's championship, 10 races, and Cristiano Da Matta rode Toyota power to the driver's championship. As icing on the cake, Bruno Junqueira, also Toyota-powered finished second.

Indy Racing League

Toyota moved to the Indy Racing League in 2003 and provided factory support to former CART teams Penske Racing and Chip Ganassi Racing as well as other teams. They were one of the top engines in their first year, winning the Indianapolis 500 with Gil de Ferran and the championship with Scott Dixon. However, 2004 and 2005 were not so kind and wins were few and far between. Following the 2005 season, the Penske and Ganassi teams announced they would switch engines to Honda, leaving Toyota with no championship contenders. As a result of this and their intent to re-allocate resources for NASCAR, Toyota announced they would leave the series during the offseason.

Prototype Sports Car racing and the 24 Hours of Le Mans

In 1998, Toyota debuted the sleek new GT-One prototype racing cars to compete for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The three Toyota GT-One cars (codenamed TS020) were among the fastest cars on the track, but ultimately failed in their quest for overall victory at Le Mans due to various mechanical and electrical failures. Toyota returned to the Circuit de la Sarthe in 1999 with revised models of it's GT-One prototype. The cars proved to be even faster than the year before, but succumbed to reliability problems during the grueling race. After the 1999 race, Toyota withdrew the GT-One cars in favor of focusing its racing research and development on the future Formula One effort.

Entry into Formula One

In 2002 Toyota started racing in Formula One with Toyota Team Europe, based in Cologne. Despite a huge investment, the team's performances have been mediocre so far. In 2004, top designer Mike Gascoyne was hired; by 2005 the team had advanced from the midfield to challenging for the top positions. Jarno Trulli achieved two second places and one third place in the first five races of the season, helping the team to retain second position in the Constructors Championship for several races. Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher are the team's current drivers.

NASCAR

Toyota also races the Toyota Tundra in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, and they will enter NASCAR's Busch Series and Nextel Cup in 2007 with the Toyota Camry.

Holdings

Toyota reports on its consolidated financial statements 540 consolidated subsidiaries and 226 affiliates.

Toyota Motor North America, Inc. (100% - 2004)
Hino Motors, Ltd. (50.1% - March 31, 2005)
Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd. (51.2% - March 31, 2005)
DENSO Corporation (22.98% - March 31, 2005)
Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd. (23.0% - March 31, 2005)
Toyota Canada Inc. owned via Toyota Motor North America, Inc.

Non-automotive activities

Finance

Toyota Financial Services Corporation provides financing to Toyota customers.

Agricultural biotechnology

Toyota invests in several small start-up businesses and partnerships in biotechnology, including:

P.T. Toyota Bio Indonesia in Lampung, Indonesia
Australian Afforestation Pty. Ltd. in Western Australia and Southern Australia
Toyota Floritech Co., Ltd. in Rokkasho-Mura, Kamikita District, Aomori Prefecture
Sichuan Toyota Nitan Development Co., Ltd. in Sichuan, China
Toyota Roof Garden Corporation in Miyoshi-Cho, Aichi Prefecture

Namesakes

Toyota is also a city in Aichi, Japan, named after the corporation. The basketball and hockey arena in Houston, Texas, the Toyota Center, is also named after the company. A football (soccer) stadium in Prague, Czech Republic, the Toyota Arena, also bears the company's name. Toyota also sponsors the Nagoya Grampus Eight. The team also plays its home games at Toyota Stadium. A practice facility in El Segundo, California is named for Toyota (Toyota Sports Center).

In the hit MMORPG EverQuest, players can type /atoyot to experience "quite the feeling", with an associated player graphic, perhaps referring to their well-known 1980's slogan "Oh, what a feeling!"
The synthpop band, Human League have a song titled, Toyota City on their album Travelogue.

External links

Toyota Motor Corp. websites
Toyota Motor official site
Toyota Argentina (Spanish)
Toyota Australia
Toyota USA
Toyota UK (Sales Site)
Toyota Canada
Toyota India
Toyota Ireland
Toyota Malaysia
Toyota New Zealand
Toyota Pakistan
Toyota Peru (Spanish)
Toyota Philippines
Toyota Singapore
Toyota South Africa
Toyota Thailand (Thai)
Toyota UK (Information Site)
Toyota Venezuela (Spanish)
Scion USA (requires flash)
Lexus USA
Toyota Financial Services USA
Current Japanese Toyota lineup
Current American Toyota lineup (requires Flash)
Toyota North America 2003 Environmental Report (pdf format)
Toyota North America 2004 Environmental Report (pdf format)
Information on Toyota's environmental protection policies
http://www.antonov-transmission.com/ (Antonov Hybrid Technology Sues Toyota Over Patents

Source:-Wikipedia

The Home Depot, Inc.

2006-04-10T08:23:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NYSE: HD)

Founded 1978 Atlanta, Georgia

Location Atlanta, Georgia

Key people Robert Nardelli, CEO & Chairman

Industry Retail (Home Improvement)

Products Home improvement products such as appliances, tools, hardware, and garden supplies & plants.

Revenue $81.511 billion USD (2005)

Employees 325,000

Website The Home Depot

The Home Depot NYSE: HD, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is a big box home improvement retailer that aims for both the do-it-yourself consumer and the professional in home improvement and construction. It is the second largest retailer in the United States, behind Wal-Mart; and the third largest retailer in the world, behind Wal-Mart and French company Carrefour. The Home Depot operates about 2,000 stores across North America. The company operates stores in the United States (including the 50 states, Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands), Canada, and Mexico. The Home Depot also operates EXPO Design Center stores in select U.S. markets, providing high-end home design products and services, and 10 Crescent Lane, an online home-furnishings store.

Home Depot has recently added self checkout registers at most of its stores in North America. These automated kiosks allow the customer to scans the barcode of the item they wish to purchase, then insert money to pay for the items, and receive any change automatically. The customer no longer needs to interact with a store employee during checkout, which has allowed Home Depot to redeploy more staff onto their store floors to assist shopping customers.

The Home Depot employs over 325,000 people

History

Home Depot stores are large, averaging 109,000 ft² (10,000 m²) and warehouse-style, stocking a large range of supplies. The company color is a bright orange (PMS 165, CMYK 60M100Y), on signs, equipment and employee aprons.

The company was founded in 1979 in Atlanta, Georgia by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, and grew rapidly, with sales topping $1 billion annually by 1986.

In 2000, Marcus and Blank retired. Robert (Bob) L. Nardelli became chairman, president & chief executive officer of The Home Depot. He had previously spent almost 30 years at General Electric, his career culminating as president and CEO of GE Power Systems.

The Home Depot today

Its 2005 sales totaled US$81.5 billion. Despite the 11% increase in revenue, it dropped one spot to #14 on the 2006 FORTUNE magazine's FORTUNE 500 list (it was #13 in 2005 on $73.1 billion sales in 2004). The Home Depot also owns EXPO Design Center, a chain of higher-end home decorating and appliance stores. and online home-furnishings store 10 Crescent Lane.

Corporate governance

Current members of the board of directors of Home Depot are: Greg Brenneman, Richard H. Brown, John Clendenin, Claudio González, Milledge Hart, Bonnie Hill, Laban Jackson, Lawrence R. Johnston, Ken Langone, Robert Nardelli, and Tom Ridge.

Exclusive Brands

Home Depot carries several exclusive brands:

RIDGID (power tools and professional plumbing tools)
Ryobi (power tools)
Workforce (Home Depot house-brand hand tools)
Thomasville cabinetry
Ralph Lauren paint
Mill's Pride
Hampton Bay (Home Depot house-brand lighting and ceiling fans)
Glacier Bay (Home Depot house-brand faucets)
Behr Paint

Major sponsorships

Since 1991, the company has become a large supporter of athletics, sponsoring the United States and Canadian Olympic teams, and launching a program to offer employment to athletes that fully allowed for their training and competition schedules. While remaining supportive of Canadian Olympians, Home Depot ceased to be a sponsor of the Canadian Olympic Team in 2005. Company co-founder Blank also purchased the Atlanta Falcons franchise of the National Football League in February 2002. The Home Depot is also the primary sponsor of Joe Gibbs Racing. NASCAR driver Tony Stewart drives The Home Depot #20 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS.

Home Depot Canada

Home Depot Canada is the Canadian unit of Home Depot and one of Canada's top home improvement retailers. The Canadian operations consists of more than a hundred stores in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador and employs over 18,000 people in Canada. Unlike its American counterpart, the chain is only known as Home Depot (and does not employ a "The" prefix).

The Canadian unit was created with the purchase of Aikenhead Hardware. Home Depot management has an ambitious plan to overtake its biggest competitor, Rona, which has about four times as many stores. However, many of Rona's stores are smaller than the typical Home Depot store. In terms of big box stores, Home Depot has many more stores than Rona.

External links

Home Depot USA (English website)
Home Depot USA (Spanish website)
Home Depot Canada (English and French website)
Home Depot Mexico
EXPO Design Center
10 Crescent Lane
Bernie Marcus
Home Depot, Scholarly article
Home Depot is Not Always Welcomed in Some Communities

Source:- Wikipedia

American International Group, Inc

2006-03-30T10:48:00.000-09:00

Type Public

Founded 1919

Location 70 Pine Street, New York, New York

Key people Martin J. Sullivan, CEO

Industry Insurance

Products Insurance

Revenue $98.6 Billion USD (2005)

Employees 86,000

Website American International Group, Inc

American International Group, Inc. (AIG) NYSE: AIG TYO: 8685 is a major Insurance corporation based in New York City. It is the third-largest company in the world according to the 2005 Forbes Global 2000 list. The company became a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on April 8, 2004.

History

AIG was founded in 1919 by Cornelius Vander Starr in Shanghai, China. Starr was the first Westerner in Shanghai to sell insurance to the Chinese. When his business was successful there, he expanded to Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East.

In 1962, Starr gave management of the company's unsuccessful U.S. holdings to Hank Greenberg, who shifted the company's U.S. focus from personal insurance to high-margin corporate coverge. Greenberg focused on selling the insurance through independent brokers, and not agents. This is because Greenberg did not want to sell insurance at prices that sometimes became too low (to cover the future payouts) because of competition from other companies; if the company had agents it would have to continue paying their salary while selling little to no insurance. Instead, with brokers, AIG could always price insurance properly and have little to no sales of certain products for long lengths of time with very little extra expense. In 1968, Starr named Greenberg as his successor. The company went public in 1969. Greenberg resigned as the company's CEO in February 2005 amid concern from the board about regulatory inquiries. a

Holdings

AIG owns ILFC, the world's largest aircraft leasing company, with hundreds of aircraft ranging from Airbus A319s to Boeing 747-400s.

The company also owns a ski resort (Greenberg skis frequently) and a private golf course in Morefar, upstate New York.

Business

It is the world's leading international insurance and financial services organization, with operations in more than 130 countries and jurisdictions. AIG member companies serve commercial, institutional and individual customers through the most extensive worldwide property-casualty and life insurance networks of any insurer. In the United States, AIG companies are the largest underwriters of commercial and industrial insurance and AIG American General is a top-ranked life insurer. AIG's global businesses also include financial services, retirement services and asset management. AIG's financial services businesses include aircraft leasing, financial products, trading and market making. AIG's growing global consumer finance business is led in the United States by American General Finance. AIG also has one of the largest U.S. retirement services businesses through AIG SunAmerica and AIG VALIC, and is a leader in asset management for the individual and institutional markets, with specialized investment management capabilities in equities, fixed income, alternative investments and real estate. AIG's common stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as stock exchanges in London, Paris, Switzerland and Tokyo

Business Model

Besides being a financial conglomerate to cause more stable earnings, and the sale of commercial insurance through brokers and not agents as described earlier, a third focus of AIG's business model is the concept of an underwriting profit. For example, an auto insurance company collects money every month from its customers. If one gets into an accident it has to pay money for the accident, but in the meantime the money can be invested. Returns from investments are one (and for many insurance companies throughout time, the only) source of profits for an insurance company. If the amount of money over time paid out is less then what is taken in, this excess is an additional profit, which is called an "underwriting profit". Greenberg believed that it was necessary for an insurance company to make an underwriting profit, even though this is not normal for many companies in different segments of the insurance industry.

Litigation

In November of 2004 AIG reached a $US126 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department that resolved the matter in part, but the insurer must still co-operate with investigators who are continuing their probe into the sale of a "non-traditional insurance product". The settlement was related to a so called "finite insurance" product.

Accounting Fraud Claims

In 2005, after a scandal on insurance and mutual funds the year before, AIG is under investigation for accounting fraud. The company already lost over 58 billion US dollars worth of market capitalisation because of the scandal as of May.

Timeline

In early May 2005, AIG restates financial statements, and issues a reduction in book value of USD $2.7 billion, a 3.3 percent reduction in net worth. AIG's share price falls due to conservative investors selling shares.
On February 9, 2006, AIG and the New York State Attorney General's office agreed to a settlement in which AIG would pay a fine of $1.6 billion.

Other articles

Accounting scandal

Source:- Wikipedia

Citigroup

2006-03-27T10:22:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NYSE: C)

Founded Baltimore, Maryland (1986)

Location New York, New York

Key people
Sanford I Weill, Chairman
Robert Rubin, Director
Charles Prince, CEO
Robert Willumstad, COO
Sallie Krawcheck, CFO
Industry Money Center Banks
Products Checking Accounts
Insurance
Stock Brokerage
Investment Bank
Asset Based Lending
consumer finance
Revenue $108.276B USD ( 9.2%) (FY 2004)

Employees 275,000 (2004)

Website Citigroup

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) is a major financial services company based in New York City. According to Forbes Global 2000, it is the world's biggest company and the most profitable financial services firm. Its formation was announced on April 7, 1998 through a merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group. It was the first US company to combine banking with insurance underwriting since the Great Depression. The company has over 275,000 employees and over 200 million customer accounts in more than 100 countries. It is a primary dealer in U.S. Treasury securities and its stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Market share

Although it is one of the largest companies in the world, Citigroup only had a 5% global market share of its industry in 2003. The financial services sector, though the largest industry in terms of earnings, is also the most fragmented in terms of companies. Citigroup had a 10% share of the "capital markets & banking" (corporate and investment bank division) in 2003 ([1]). The Thomson Financial League Tables tracks the underwriting and M&A segment of that in more detail.

2003 global (except Retail Banking) market share:

Capital Mrkts. & Banking: 10%
Consumer Finance: 6
Private Client Services: 5
US Retail Banking: 4
Transaction Services: 2
Private Bank: 2

History

The history of the corporation now known as Citigroup is primarily the history of its Chairman, Sandy Weill, who spun off a consumer finance company known as Commercial Credit from Control Data Systems, and used it to begin assembling a gigantic financial conglomerate. After acquiring some small consumer finance companies, Commercial Credit acquired the much larger Primerica, and adopted the more famous Primerica name for the holding company.

Primerica was a conglomerate patterned after the modern General Electric by the famous mutual fund manager Gerry Tsai. As GE was doing at the time, Tsai was trying to position Primerica heavily into the financial services realm, acquiring A L Williams, a life insurance company that started the "buy term, and invest the difference" philosophy, and Smith Barney, a large stock broker. He bought Smith Barney at the height of a bull market, and the resulting stock market crash put a tremendous strain on the overall company, forcing him to sell. Tsai had inserted lucrative golden parachutes into his contract agreements because he knew he was going to have to sell, which made the deal more expensive than Commercial Credit was willing to pay. Weill was eventually convinced to go ahead with the deal because he would then be able to use Primerica's Gulfstream G4 jet, something which the Commercial Credit board of directors was not willing to pay for.

Upon acquiring the company in 1988, Weill spun off the non-financial businesses of the conglomerate, and attempted to institute the practice of "cross-selling" (also called "cross-servicing"), which he had used previously at American Express. Instead of the corporation owning a stock brokerage, insurance agency, and consumer finance company and letting them each run essentially separately, Weill was interested in each selling each others' products. For example, the insurance agents could sell Smith Barney mutual funds.

During this period Weill became interested in the Travelers Insurance company, which had come to Weill for a cash injection because of losses sustained during Hurricane Andrew. Weill also inserted management into that company to oversee operations and cost cutting. This eventually led to the acquisition of Travelers Insurance.

The Travelers Insurance acquisition added property and casualty, and life and annuities underwriting capabilities to the group. It also brought along the Travelers red umbrella logo, which Weill applied to all the businesses within the group. During this time Travelers acquired Shearson, which was a large stock brokerage Weill used to run. It then acquired Salomon Brothers, a famous investment bank. Weill attempted to negotiate a deal to merge with JP Morgan, but this was rejected because the JP Morgan CEO would have wanted to become CEO of the combined company. Weill was eventually successful at convincing John Reed, the CEO of Citicorp, to merge.

Citicorp

Citicorp was the descendant of City National Bank, founded in New York. It was one of the oldest Banks in the United States, and had the largest international branch presence of any United States headquartered bank. It specialized in large corporate banking, and was one of the largest banks in the United States at the time. The CEO at the time of the merger, John Reed, was instrumental in pushing for the acceptance and use of ATMs, and had seen the company through a financially bleak period when it had many problems with international loans defaulting. Reed had been trying to change the corporate culture of Citicorp, for example by hiring top executives from consumer product companies, not banks. Reed felt that the chance to merge with the Travelers Group would help effect change in this area.

Merger

The merger took place in 1998. This was illegal because the remaining provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act (legislation stemming from the United States' Great Depression era) did not allow banks to merge with insurance underwriters. Chuck Prince and his team of lawyers, studying the law, found that the Federal Reserve could grant the companies a two year trial period before they would have to divest the insurance underwriting business. The CEOs thought that they could change the law before the expiration date. The law was finally changed in 1999 when Glass-Steagall was invalidated by the passing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act. Ironically, Citigroup eventually did, of its own will, divest almost all its insurance underwriting businesses.

Post merger history

In order to convince Citicorp to merge, Weill proposed a structure of co-CEO's, consisting of himself and John Reed. This strategy was denounced immediately by many in the press and many research analysts as being unworkable. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was brought in as a moderating influence between Weill and Reed, but conflicts within the company eventually led to Reed being forced out (though Rubin remains). In addition, three co-CEO's (Jamie Dimon and Deryck Maughnan from Travelers, and Victor Menzes from Citicorp) were placed in charge of the corporate and investment bank, while two co-CEO's were placed in charge of the consumer group. This was dubbed "The Noah's ark school of management" by the press, and did not last long.

The Traveler's management attempted to implement its culture of cost cutting and cross selling into Citigroup. Citibank retail bankers were instructed to get securities and insurance licensed to sell mutual funds and annuities. US retail banking, however, never became a major focus for the company. Todd Thompson, CFO, explained that "the retail branches are mostly a deposit gathering operation used to fund other, higher return, areas". At the present time, its different consumer divisions are not as integrated as other financial institutions, with each one primarily running as a stand-alone monoline.

The corporate and investment had a more difficult time integrating. There was infighting between corporate bankers and investment bankers, as to who would be the primary relationship point of contact with a customer. Conflicts between the tri-CEO's (including a drunken skirmish between Dimon and Maugnan at a company retreat) led to the ousting of Jamie Dimon.

The company soon acquired Associates First Capital, the largest consumer finance company, and Banamex, the largest bank in Mexico. This was controversial in Mexico: at the time the press there were worried that Mexico's largest banks would all become "branch offices for foreign competitors". Bombs were placed in branches in violent protest.

The company spun off its Travelers Property and Casualty insurance underwriting business because it caused a drag on the Citigroup stock price due to its earnings being more seasonal and vulnerable to large disasters. It was also difficult to sell this kind of insurance directly to customers since most industrial customers are accustomed to purchasing insurance through a broker. Travelers Property Casualty Corporation, formally of Citigroup merged with The St. Paul Companies in 2004 forming The St. Paul Travelers Companies, Inc. Citigroup retained the life insurance and annuities underwriting business. However, by 2005 Citigroup decided to sell its life insurance underwriting division to MetLife for the same reasons. Citigroup still heavily sells all forms of insurance, but it no longer manufactures (i.e. underwrites) insurance. Citigroup does nevertheless retain Travelers' signature red umbrella logo as its own.

Business model

Citigroup and its predecessor companies use the "diversified financial services business model" first invented by Prudential in the late seventies. Simply put, this model attempts to conglomerate many types of finance companies, such as stock brokers, banks, insurance companies, and others. This is done because each of those businesses do better or worse at different times of the business cycle, and so owning all of them balances things out and creates in theory less earnings volatility. This is also done because customers usually use many different kinds of financial products and attempting to convince them to use more products from the same company sells more products more cheaply, compared to those separate companies strictly selling products on their own.

During the era of Sandy Weill, much of Citigroup and predecessor's efforts were focused on acquisitions. Much of the efforts were focused in the stock brokerage and investment banking areas, and most of the acquisitions were companies which had recently had problems and were selling at a low price. After the acquisition, the management team would usually engage in aggressive cost cutting to build up cash for the next deal.

The present CEO, Chuck Prince, has said "the day of the transformative deal (merger) is over". This is thought to refer to mega deals like the Citicorp/Travelers merger, as Citigroup continues to acquire. The focus of the company though, is said to have changed to organic revenue growth, that is selling more products instead of focusing on acquisitions and cost cutting alone to increase profit.

Citigroup's 2005 sale of the remainder of Travelers Insurance to MetLife was described by the press as the death knell of the bank-insurance cross-selling model. This is a false analysis though, as Citigroup continues to cross sell insurance, but no longer underwrites it. This focus on selling almost all kinds of financial products, but not necessarily "manufacturing them", is also what prompted Citigroup to recently trade its mutual fund business to Legg Mason in return for more stockbrokers.

Real estate

Its most famous office building is the Citigroup Center, a diagonal-roof skyscraper located in New York City's Midtown Manhattan, which despite popular belief is not the company's headquarters building. Citigroup has its headquarters across the street in an anonymous-looking building at 399 Park Avenue (the site of the original location of the City National Bank). The headquarters is outfitted with nine luxury dining rooms, with a team of private chefs preparing a different menu for each day. The management team is on the third and fourth floors above a Citibank branch. Smith Barney leases a building in the Tribeca neighborhood in Manhattan, the former headquarters of the Travelers Group and famous for its red umbrella sculpture.

In a truly well planned strategy, Citigroup's real estate in New York City, excluding the company's Smith Barney division and Wall Street trading division, lie all along New York City's 'E' and 'V' subway lines. This means that the Midtown buildings the company inhabits -- including 666 Fifth Avenue, 399 Park Avenue, 153 East 53rd street (Citigroup Center) and 1 Court Square (in Long Island City) -- are all one stop away from each other. In fact, every company building lies above or right across the street from an 'E' or 'V' line subway station.

Divisions

Citigroup is divided into different divisions, each which contain many areas of business. The main divisions are Global Consumer, Global Corporate and Investment Bank, Private Client Services, and Global Investment management.

The Global Consumer Group is comprised of three sub-divisions, Cards (credit cards), Consumer Finance, and Retail Banking. The credit card business on average delivers about 40% of the profits of this group. Citigroup is the largest provider of credit cards in the world, a position long held by Citicorp, and increased by many acquisitions of card portfolios. It provides credit cards in many countries even where it doesn't have branches, and advertises directly on TV and by direct mail. The Consumer Finance Division (called Citifinancial) accounts for about 20% of the consumer group's profits. This division engages in the controversial practice of high interest rate lending to people with bad credit histories, called "loan sharking" or "predatory lending" by critics. Although this was the core of the corporation from which other divisions were acquired, most of the size, stores, and global reach of this division came from the takeover of Associates First Capital. Citifinancial is now the largest consumer finance company in the world.

The final division is the retail bank. This division consists of the normal retail branch system that banks are most known for. This goes by the brand name "Citibank". Citibank is about the fifth largest retail bank in the United States, and it has branches in countries throughout the world. The biggest part of retail banking however is Banamex, the largest bank in Mexico, which Citigroup owns. Overall the Global Consumer group contributes more than half of all the profits for Citigroup. If it were a separate company, it would still be in the top ten most profitable companies in the world.

The Global Corporate and Investment bank consists of two subdivisions, capital markets & banking, and global transaction services. This division essentially handles large corporate cash management, lending, and Investment Banking. Citigroup's investment bank is one of the largest, frequently topping many League Tables. It does not engage in as much proprietary trading (stock and bond speculation) as do other investment banks. Most of the largest scandals of Citigroup have been from this division.

Citigroup's Global Corporate and Investment Bank headquarters, TriBeCa, Manhattan (New York City).Investment Management is composed of businesses whose outcome depends strongly on the investment decisions of the managers of that business. This division is also probably organized to divide up the labor equally amongst executive management. Included in this group is Life Insurance & Annuities (Travelers Insurance), Asset Management (mutual funds), and the Private Bank. Life Insurance & Annuities goes under the brand name Travelers Insurance, and sells those services wholesale through insurance agents and brokers around the world. Asset Management mutual funds are also sold primarily wholesale, under the brand names Salomon Brothers and Smith Barney. The Private Bank is a high end boutique bank designed to distribute financial products to the very wealthy. Citigroup runs the Private Bank in many countries where it doesn't have normal bank branches.

The final division is called Private Client Services, a euphemism for a stock brokerage. This division is branded Smith Barney, and is the second largest stock broker in the world. It usually contributes however, only around 6% of Citigroup's profits. This division is now headed by Todd Thomson, who took the job in 2004 after resigning as CFO of Citigroup.

Scandals

Citigroup has been involved in several scandals. Some of these are in specific businesses and are shared amongst other businesses within that industry, while some result from a conflict or collusion between different divisions of Citigroup. This second type of scandal have caused some to call into question the "financial supermarket" aspect of Citigroup.

Associates

The first major scandal of Citigroup was when it acquired the largest Consumer Finance company Associates First Capital in 2000. Associates was already under attack for what were called "predatory lending" practices, specifically the selling of single premium credit insurance. Upon being acquired the same attacks were turned towards Citigroup, who stopped the practice of selling the single premium credit insurance, and instituted other changes. In the end the company was fined for the former practices. The present combined consumer finance division, called CitiFinancial continues to share in the general controversy over consumer finance. In May 2004, CitiFinancial was fined $70 million by the U.S. Federal Reserve, for continued predatory lending (described in detail in Inner City Press' Weekly Citigroup Watch Report).

Biased research

The next major scandal was the accusation that Citigroup and other investment banks had struck secret deals with companies that said that the bank's stock research division would rate that company a "Buy" if it would do investment banking with that division. Implicated by that scandal was analyst Jack Grubman. This scandal led to some wondering if the financial services conglomerate concept would lead to conflicts of interest such as this. The premise of this question however, is considered by some to be somewhat flawed insofar as research companies have almost always been owned by investment banks, even before the repeal of Glass-Steagal. The firm eventually paid the largest fine in the "global settlement" with the state, resulting from conflicts of interest between research and investment banking at Salomon Smith Barney.

To help put investors at ease, Citigroup hired one of its most outspoken critics, Sallie Krawcheck, to head Smith Barney (now a pure stock brokerage division), which was separated from the investment bank within the corporate structure. It dropped the "Salomon" from the name, as this name historically denoted investment banking.

Primerica

Primerica is now the brand name given to Citigroup's multi-level-marketing insurance and other financial services sales force. This division was formerly known as A L Williams. Critics call it a cult, or criticize its sales practices. Historically A L Williams was the major force in popularizing Term Life Insurance. See the Primerica article for more details.

Enron, and Parmalat

Citigroup was also accused of helping Enron and other companies hide their losses by loaning money to those companies in a special way that would reduce liabilities visible on the balance sheet. In May 2004 the company agreed to pay $2.65 billion, or $1.64 billion after tax, to settle a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of purchasers of WorldCom securities.

Japan Private Banking Scandal Citigroup removed three senior executives in the wake of a banking scandal in Japan. The scandal involved the Private Bank, the division that deals with very wealthy customers. It was alleged that the Private Bank failed to follow certain anti-money laundering procedures, that it used deceptive sales tactics, and that it assisted a customer in doing transactions which disrupted the financial markets or were fraudulent. This caused the Japanese regulators to shut down the Private Bank.

Deryck Maughan, a Citigroup vice chairman and head of Citigroup International, Thomas W. Jones, chairman and chief executive of the global investment management division, and Peter K. Scaturro, head of Citi's private bank, left the company. Maughan had been with Citigroup and its predecessor Salomon Brothers since 1983. Jones and Scaturro were both members of the Citigroup management committee. A memo from Chief Executive Charles Prince said that Citigroup President Robert B. Willumstad would take charge of the businesses run by the three departing executives.

Citigroup Proprietary Government Bond Trading Scandal Citigroup was critized by the European Financial Governmence institutes for disrupting the European bond market by rapidly selling €11 billion worth of bonds on August 2, 2004 on the MTS Group trading platform, driving down the price, and then buying it back at cheaper prices. An investigation is pending. Relatedly, the U.S. Federal Reserve refused to rule on Citigroup's application to acquire First American Bank in Texas, from September 2004 through March 2005 (described in detail in Inner City Press' Weekly Citigroup Watch Report).

Brasil Telecom and Brazilian Pension Funds Citigroup, a major shareholder of Brasil Telecom through an investment partnership in Brazil, was implicated in charges revolving around a highly controversial deal executed with pension funds of Brazilian state-owned companies, by which these funds would have a put option against them for a value deemed far above arm's-length market levels. After public outcry in Brazil, the deal was partly annulled by a federal court and the matter is being investigated by a panel of Brazilian congresspeople, with Citibank's president in Brazil Mr. Gustavo Marin having been heard in October 2005.

Improper Assessment of Late Fees Also in 2001 Citibank settled a lawsuit for improperly assessing late fees. The class action lawsuit was for 45 million dollars. Following this Citibank lobbied in Congress, to pass legislation that would limit class action lawsuits to 5 million dollars unless they were initiated on a federal level (Class Action Fairness Act of 2005). Many consumer advocate websites report that Citibank is still improperly assessing late fees.

Brands

Citibank, providing consumer banking products.
Citimortage, Mortgage Lender
Citifinancial, Consumer finance aka sub-prime lending
Diner's Club International, credit cards.
Grupo Financiero Banamex, largest Mexico bank
Primerica, engages in multi-level-marketing of financial services
SmithBarney, investment services, both retail full service brokerage, private client services, and formerly the brand name used for the Investment bank
Travelers Life & Annuity, insurance services.

External links

Corporate website
Citigroup's ancestor companies 1812 - 2000
Citibank Credit Cards
Forecaster of the Month: Citigroup's Jones is a two-time winner - Financial - Banks - Financial Services - Economy - Bond Market
The New York Times > Business > World Business > U.S. Looking at Citigroup's Accounting in Argentina - May 6, 2004
Poverty and Citigroup
Criminal probe on Citigroup deals

Source:-Wikipedia

ExxonMobil

2006-03-21T08:27:00.000-09:00

Exxon-branded gas station in California (actually operated by Valero)

Type Public (NYSE: XOM)

Founded 1882 (in 1999, company took on current name)

Location HQ in Irving, Texas

Key people Chairman and CEO, Rex W. Tillerson

Industry Oil and Gasoline

Products Petrochemical products

Revenue $371 billion USD (2005)

Employees 88,300

Website ExxonMobil

Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) is the largest price gouging oil producer and distributor in the world, formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. By some measures, it is the largest publicly traded company in the world. Its operating profit in 2005 was $36.13 billion (an all-time record for any publicly traded company), slightly less than the gross domestic product of Azerbaijan, while its revenues were larger than the GDP of Saudi Arabia. Its headquarters are in Irving, a suburb of Dallas, Texas. The merger of Exxon and Mobil is symbolic in American history because it once again consolidated the two largest companies (Standard Oil Company of New Jersey/Exxon and Standard Oil Company of New York/Mobil) of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil trust. Exxon Mobil is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The current ExxonMobil is the parent of Exxon, Mobil, and Esso companies around the world and is the largest oil company in the world by profit and market value.

Name

Exxon formally replaced the Esso, Enco, and Humble brands on January 1, 1973, in the USA. The name Esso, pronounced S-O, attracted protests from other Standard Oil spinoffs because of its similarity to the name of the parent company, Standard Oil. Hence, the company was restricted from using Esso in the USA except in those states awarded to it in the 1911 Standard Oil antitrust settlement. In states where the Esso brand was blackballed, the company marketed its gasoline under the Humble or Enco brands. The Humble brand was used at Texas stations for decades as those operations were under the direction of Jersey Standard affiliate, Humble Oil, and in the mid-to-late 1950s expanded to other Southwestern states including New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma.

In 1960, Jersey Standard gained full control of Humble Oil and Refining Co. and, through a reorganization of the company, restructured Humble into Jersey's domestic marketing and refining division to sell and market gasoline nationwide under the Esso, Enco and Humble brands. The Enco brand was introduced by Humble in 1960 at stations in Ohio but was soon blackballed after Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio) protested that Enco (Humble's acronym for "ENergy COmpany) sounded and looked too much like Esso as it shared the same oval logo with blue border and red letters with the two middle letters the only difference. At that point, the stations in Ohio would be rebranded Humble until the name change to Exxon in 1972.

After the Enco brand was discontinued in Ohio, it was moved to other non-Esso states. In 1961, Humble stations in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona were rebranded as Enco and the Enco brand appeared on gasoline and lubricant products at Humble stations in Texas that same year with service stations there changed to Enco in 1962. By that time, Jersey had expanded the Enco brand to stations in the Midwest and Northwest that had been operated by various subsidaries such as Carter, Pate and Oklahoma among others.

In 1963, Humble was approached by Tidewater Oil Company, a major gasoline marketer along the eastern and western seaboards, to purchase the firm's refining and marketing operations on the west coast, a move that would have given Humble a large number of existing stations and a refinery in California, which was then the fastest-growing gasoline market. However, the Justice Department objected to Humble's plan to purchase Tidewater's west coast operations, which were later sold to Phillips Petroleum in 1966. Meanwhile, Humble gradually built up new and rebranded service stations in California and other western states under the Enco brand and purchased a large number of stations from Signal Oil Company in 1967, followed by the opening of a new refinery Benicia, California in 1969.

In 1966, the Justice Department ordered Humble to "cease and desist" from using the Esso brand at stations in several Southeastern states following protests from Standard Oil of Kentucky (a Standard Oil of California subsidiary by that time and in the process of rebranding the Kyso stations as Chevron). By 1967, stations in each of those states were rebranded as Enco.

Despite the success of the "Put A Tiger In Your Tank" advertising campaign introduced by Humble in 1964 to promote its Enco/Esso Extra gasolines, the similar logotypes, use of the Humble name in all Esso/Enco ads and the uniformity in design and products of Humble stations nationwide, the company still had difficulties promoting itself as a nationwide gasoline marketer competing against truly national brands such as Texaco - then a 50-state marketer and the only company selling products under one brand name in each state. Humble officials realized by the late 1960s that the time had come to swallow its pride by developing a new brand name that could be used nationwide throughout the U.S. At first, consideration was given to simply rebranding all stations as "Enco" but that was shelved when it was learned that "Enco" is a Japanese abbreviation of "engine failure." (エンジン故障, enjinkoshou)

In order to create a unified brand, the company changed its corporate name from Jersey Standard to Exxon, rebranding all its U.S. stations under the latter title in the summer and fall of 1972 following the successful test marketing of the Exxon brand and logo in late 1971 and early 1972 at rebranded Enco/Esso stations in certain U.S. cities. However, the unrestricted international use of the popular brand Esso prompted the company to continue using Esso outside of the USA. Esso is the only widely used Standard Oil brand left in existence. Other Standard Oil descendants, such as BP and Chevron, do however maintain a few stations with the Standard Oil brand in specific states in order to retain their trademarks and prevent others from using them.

The rectangular Exxon logo with the blue strip at the bottom and red lettering with the two "X's" interlinked together was designed by noted industrial stylist Raymond Loewy. The interlinked "X's" are incorporated in the modern-day ExxonMobil corporate logo, but the original Exxon sign continues for marketing efforts and station signage.

History

Both Exxon and Mobil were descendants of the old John D. Rockefeller monopoly, Standard Oil. In 1911, after a United States Supreme Court ruling which upheld a federal court order to dissolve it, the Standard Oil Trust was split into 34 companies. Two of these companies were Jersey Standard, which eventually became Exxon, and Socony ("Standard Oil Company of New York"), which eventually became Mobil.

In the same year, the nation's kerosene output was eclipsed for the first time by gasoline. The growing automotive market inspired the product trademark Mobiloil, registered by Socony in 1920.

Over the next decade, both companies grew significantly. Jersey Standard acquired a 50 percent interest in Humble Oil & Refining Co., a Texas oil producer. Socony purchased a 45 percent interest in Magnolia Petroleum Co., a major refiner, marketer and pipeline transporter. In 1931, Socony merged with Vacuum Oil Co., an industry pioneer dating back to 1866 and a growing Standard Oil spin-off in its own right.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Jersey Standard had oil production and refineries in Indonesia but no marketing network. Socony-Vacuum had Asian marketing outlets supplied remotely from California. In 1933, Jersey Standard and Socony-Vacuum merged their interests in the region into a 50-50 joint venture. Standard-Vacuum Oil Co., or "Stanvac," operated in 50 countries, from East Africa to New Zealand, before it was dissolved in 1962.

Mobil Chemical Company was established in 1960. As of 1999 its principal products included basic olefins and aromatics, ethylene glycol and polyethylene. The company produced synthetic lubricant base stocks as well as lubricant additives, propylene packaging films and catalysts. Exxon Chemical Company became a worldwide organization in 1965 and in 1999 was a major producer and marketer of olefins, aromatics, polyethylene and polypropylene along with specialty lines such as elastomers, plasticizers, solvents, process fluids, oxo alcohols and adhesive resins. The company was an industry leader in metallocene catalyst technology to make unique polymers with improved performance.

In 1955 Socony-Vacuum became Socony Mobil Oil Co. and in 1966 simply Mobil Oil Corp. A decade later, the newly incorporated Mobil Corporation absorbed Mobil Oil as a wholly owned subsidiary. Jersey Standard changed its name to Exxon Corporation in 1972 and established Exxon as a trademark throughout the United States. In other parts of the world, Exxon and its affiliated companies continued to use its Esso trademark.

On March 24, 1989, shortly after midnight, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling more than 11 million gallons (42,000 m³) of crude oil. The spill was the largest in U.S. history, and in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez incident U.S. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. At the time of the spill, Exxon paid $300 million immediately and voluntarily to more than 11,000 Alaskans and businesses affected by the Valdez spill. In addition, the company paid $2.2 billion on the cleanup of Prince William Sound, staying with the cleanup from 1989 to 1992, when the State of Alaska and the U.S. Coast Guard declared the cleanup complete. Exxon also has paid $1 billion in settlements with the state and federal governments. Virtually all Valdez compensatory damages were paid in full within one year of the accident, and the trial court commended Exxon for coming forward "with its people and its pocketbook and doing what had to be done under difficult circumstances." However, Exxon has yet to pay up for the largest punitive ruling against it, which is currently set at $4.5 billion, as the assessment is under appeal. The punitive damages were set by a Federal court judge in Anchorage,and have twice been vacated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as excessive.

In 1998, Exxon and Mobil signed a US$73.7 billion definitive agreement to merge and form a new company called Exxon Mobil Corporation, the largest company on the planet. After shareholder and regulatory approvals, the merger was completed November 30, 1999 (the deal was announced the next day).

In 2000, ExxonMobil sold the Benicia, California, refinery and 340 Exxon-branded stations to Valero Energy Corporation, as part of an FTC-mandated divestiture of California assets. ExxonMobil continues to supply petroleum product to over 700 Mobil-branded retail outlets in the state.

In 2005, its stock price surged in parallel with rising oil prices, surpassing General Electric as the largest corporation in the world in terms of market capitalization. At the end of 2005, ExxonMobil reported record profits, reporting U.S$36 billion in annual income, up 42% from last year. The company and the American Petroleum Institute, the Oil and Chemical industry's lobbying apparatus, however tried to downplay its success in order to avoid criticism from consumers by putting up page-long ads in major American newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, comparing Oil Industry profits to that of other large industries such as pharmaceuticals and banking. [1] [2]

Exxon's long-time mascot is a Tiger; Mobil's mascot is a Pegasus which dates back to the late 19th century and is one of the oldest marketing symbols still in use.

ExxonMobil now has the most assets in the world, and generated 246.7 billion dollars in total revenue for 2003.

Allegations against ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil's activities in the Indonesian territory of Aceh, where the company extracts and exports natural gas, have attracted scrutiny. In June 2001, ExxonMobil became the target of a lawsuit in the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia, under the Alien Tort Claims Act. The suit alleged that the company knowingly assisted human rights violations, including torture, murder and rape, by employing and providing material support to Indonesian military forces, who committed the alleged offenses in Aceh. Human rights complaints involving ExxonMobil's relationship with the Indonesian military first arose in 1992; numerous inquiries have found evidence of human rights violations on ExxonMobil property and/or committed by Indonesian troops guarding ExxonMobil facilities. The company denies these accusations and filed a motion to dismiss the suit, which is still pending as of 2005. The U.S. State Department filed an opinion in the case in July 2002, requesting that the suit, brought by the International Labor Rights Fund, be dismissed on national security grounds. [3]

ExxonMobil controls concessions covering 11 million acres (44,500 km²) off the coast of Angola that hold an estimated 7.5 billion barrels (1.2 km³) of crude. [4] Questions have been raised about ExxonMobil's actions in securing these concessions—Forbes Magazine alleging that "ExxonMobil handed hundreds of millions of dollars to the corrupt regime of President José Eduardo dos Santos in the late 1990s". [5]

In 2003, the Office of Foreign Assets Control reported that ExxonMobil engaged in illegal trade with Sudan and along with dozens of other companies had to settle with the United States government for US$50,000 [6].

Image:Parody-of-esso-logo.jpg
Parody of Esso logo produced for the Stop E$$O campaignExxonMobil is regarded by many environmental activists as an example of utter corporate irresponsibility and disregard for environmental concerns by US-based corporations. The company has been a target for a number of political campaigns, including the Stop Esso campaign, held by Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and People and Planet, and aimed at boycotting Esso. These organisations commonly parody the company's brandname as "E$$O", an example of alternative political spelling, to indicate their belief that the company is only interested in short-term profit, and is willing to use its financial power to buy influence. A new environmental movement in the form of Exxpose Exxon has emerged to highlight ExxonMobil's stances on global warming, alternative energies, as well as lack of reparations yet awarded to the native americans affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Unlike other major oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP, Exxon is one of the few that has actively fought the Kyoto Protocol and disputed scientific opinion on global climate change. Exxon-Mobil is highly criticized for funding climate change research, decried by environmentalists as "junk science," such as the work of the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine, a grand sounding institution having only a handful of employees and volunteers [7]. ExxonMobil has also been a leading campaigner in the yet-unsuccessful bid to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, a move that environmentalists say will destroy the region's fragile ecology.

Greenpeace has been campaigning against Esso for many years and its main reasons for doing so include ExxonMobil's position on the issue of climate change. Greenpeace claims that ExxonMobil has flatly refused to believe that the burning of fossil fuels has any negative effect on the environment or climate change as a whole, despite these theories being accepted by most of the scientific community.

Kelloggs sued Exxon based on a claim that the Tiger mascot looked like Tony the Tiger.

Diversity

ExxonMobil received a 14% rating from the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index in 2004. The company had previously lost points because after the merger it failed to adopt some of the LGBT-friendly policies previously put into place at Mobil. Moreover, sexual orientation was taken off the list of protected classes in the ExxonMobil non-discrimination policy following Mobil's merger with Exxon, and when the issue was put to a vote of shareholders, a supermajority of shareholders (more than 70%) rejected proposals to reinstate sexual orientation as a specific type of prohibited discrimination.

Domestic partner benefits were ended following Mobil's merger with Exxon. Mobil employees who already had DP benefits were allowed to keep them, but other employees could not add their DPs to the benefit plans after the merger. ExxonMobil does offer DP benefits in countries where same-sex marriage is legal.

Corporate governance

The current Chairman of the Board and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corporation is Rex Tillerson. Tillerson assumed the top position on January 1, 2006 on the retirement of long-time chairman and CEO, Lee Raymond.

Board of directors

Current Exxon Mobil board members are:

Michael Boskin
William W. George
James R. Houghton
William R. Howell
Reatha King
Philip Lippincott
Henry McKinnell, Jr.
Marilyn Nelson
Walter Shipley

External links

General information

ExxonMobil corporate website
Exxon USA website
Mobil global website
Esso global website
History of Standard Oil spinoffs and their brands
Exxonmobil entry at Knowmore.org

ExxonMobil responses to issues

ExxonMobil Web Page on Business Ethics & Standards
ExxonMobil Web Page on Climate Change
ExxonMobil Web Page on Domestic Partner Policies
ExxonMobil Web Page on Valdez Oil Spill

Funding given by ExxonMobil

Exxon's list of funded organizations.
ExxonMobil's Corporate political contributions
Greenpeace's list of organizations that have received funds from Exxon, with evidence of that funding.
Mother Jones' overview, May 2005, "Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank"

Anti ExxonMobil Websites

Stop Esso
ExxposeExxon
Greenpeace UK's page on Esso

Source:- Wikipedia

JPMorgan Chase & Co.

2006-03-17T07:24:00.000-09:00

Type Public NYSE: JPM

Founded New York, NY (1799)

Location New York, New York

Key people
William B. Harrison, Jr.,
Chairman
Jamie Dimon, President & CEO

Industry Finance and Insurance

Products Financial Services

Revenue $57.3 billion USD (2004)

Employees 168,461 (as of June 30, 2005)

Website JPMorgan Chase & Co.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. NYSE: JPM TYO: 8634 , a financial holding company incorporated under Delaware law in 1968, and headquartered in New York City, is a leading global financial services firm and one of the largest banking institutions in the United States, with $1.2 trillion in assets, $106 billion in stockholders’ equity and operations in more than 50 countries. Formed in 2000 with the merger of the Chase Manhattan Corporation and J.P. Morgan & Co.. The firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and businesses, financial transaction processing, investment management, private banking and private equity. JPMorgan Chase serves more than 90 million customers, including consumers nationwide and many of the world’s most prominent wholesale clients.

In 2004, the company acquired Bank One of Chicago, bringing on star Bank One CEO Jamie Dimon as president and COO of the merged firm and designating him as CEO William B. Harrison, Jr.'s future successor. Dimon quickly made his influence felt by embarking on a cost-cutting strategy and placing some former Bank One executives in key ranks at the new

History

Chemical Banking Corporation

The New York Chemical Manufacturing Company was founded in 1823 as a maker of various chemicals. In 1824, the company amended its charter to perform banking activities and created the Chemical Bank of New York. After 1851, the bank was separated from its parent and grew organically and through a series of mergers, most notably with Corn Exchange Bank, Texas Commerce Bank (a large bank in Texas), and Manufacturer's Hanover Trust Company. At many points throughout this history Chemical Bank was the largest bank in the United States (either in terms of assets or deposit market share).

In 1996, the company acquired the Chase Manhattan Corporation but kept that name. In 2000, the company acquired J.P. Morgan & Co. and changed its name to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. As a result of the acquisitions, JPMorgan Chase retains Chemical Bank's headquarters, stock history, and most of its management.

Chase Manhattan Corporation

The Chase Manhattan Bank was formed upon the 1955 purchase of Chase National Bank (established in 1877) by the Bank of Manhattan (established in 1799), the company's oldest predecessor institution. Led by David Rockefeller during the 1970s and the 1980s, Chase Manhattan was one of the largest and most prestigious banking concerns, with leadership positions in syndicated lending, treasury and securities services, credit cards, mortgages, and retail financial services. Weakened by the real estate collapse in the early 1990s, it was acquired by Chemical Bank in 1996.

J.P. Morgan & Company

In 1895, Drexel, Morgan & Co. became J.P. Morgan & Co. (see also: John Pierpont Morgan). It financed the formation of the United States Steel Corporation, which took over the business of Andrew Carnegie and others and was the world's first billion-dollar corporation. In 1895 it supplied the United States government with $62 million in gold to float a bond issue and restore the treasury surplus of $100 million.

In 1892, the company began to finance the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and led it through a series of acquisitions that made it the dominant railroad transporter in New England. Railroads began their decline in the early 20th century, losing out to alternative transportation. Its primary competitor Kuhn, Loeb & Co. was a more successful adviser and financier to production companies and J.P. Morgan lost its first place in market cap and the league tables.

September 16, 1920: a terrorist bomb exploded in front of the headquarters of J.P. Morgan Inc. at 23 Wall Street, injuring 400 and killing 33 people.Built in 1914, 23 Wall Street was known as the "House of Morgan" and for decades the bank's headquarters was the most important address in American finance. At noon, on September 16, 1920, a terrorist bomb exploded in front of the bank, injuring 400 and killing 33. Shortly before the bomb went off a warning note was placed in a mailbox at the corner of Cedar Street and Broadway. The warning read: Remember we will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death for all of you. American Anarchists Fighters. While theories abound about who was behind the Wall Street bombing and why they did it, after twenty years investigating the matter, the FBI rendered the file inactive in 1940 without ever finding the perpetrators.

In August 1914, Henry P. Davison, a Morgan partner, traveled to England and made a deal with the Bank of England to make J. P. Morgan & Co. the monopoly underwriter of war bonds for England and France. The Bank of England became a "fiscal agent" of J. P. Morgan & Co. and vice versa. The company also invested in the suppliers of war equipment to England and France. Thus, the company profited from the financing and buying activities of the two European governments.

In the 1930s, J.P. Morgan was forced by the Glass-Steagall Act to choose either commercial banking or investment banking: J. P. Morgan chose to operate as a Commercial bank, because it was perceived to be more profitable in the post depression era. Faced with this new paradigm shift, many JP Morgan partners along with some Drexel partners, sought to begin what is now called Morgan Stanley. It is commonly misconceived that the "Morgan" in Morgan Stanley is the last name of John Pierpont Morgan, infact, it is the last name belonging to Henry Morgan who was a JP Morgan Partner. J.P. Morgan and Co. incorporated in 1940 [1] and in 1959 it merged with the Guaranty Trust Company of New York to form the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, but ten years later it established a bank holding company called J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated as its parent. By the late 1990s, when it was acquired by Chase Manhattan, J.P. Morgan had turned itself into an investment bank too. Besides investment banking, it also offered private banking and private equity services.

JP Morgan formerly were advisors to Malcolm Glazer & Family in their takeover of Manchester United. They resigned after the Glazers voted three of the Manchester United directors off the board. This was against the advice of JP Morgan.

Offices

The bank's headquarters are located at the One Chase Manhattan Plaza building in Downtown Manhattan. Most of the commercial bank operations take place in offices ranging from street corner branches to downtown offices. The bank moved many of its operations to the JPMorgan Chase Tower (formally Texas Commerce Bank Tower) in Houston, Texas when it purchased Texas Commerce Bank.

JPMorgan Securities, the investment banking arm of JPMorgan, also maintains a number of high-profile offices around the globe. The bulk of North American operations, however, take place in two buildings located on both sides of Park Avenue in New York City, the former Union Carbide Building at 270 Park Ave and the original Chemical Bank building at 277 Park Ave. Sales and Trading Operations are located on the trading floors in 270 Park Ave, while most Investment Banking activity takes place at 277 Park Ave. Jimmy Lee, JPMorgan's infamous private equity banker, has offices on the top floors of 270 Park Ave.

External links

JPMorgan Chase & Co. website
JPMorgan Chase Annual Report 2004

Source:-Wikipedia

General Electric Co.

2006-03-13T08:08:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NYSE: GE)

Founded 1879

Location Fairfield, Connecticut

Key people
Jeff Immelt, Chairman & CEO
Keith S. Sherin, CFO
Sir William Castell,Executive Vice Chairman
Gary M. Reiner, CIO
Dennis Dammerman,Executive Vice Chairman
Robert Wright, Vice Chairman

Industry Conglomerates

Products
aircraft jet engines
electricity
entertainment
finance
generation
industrial automation
lighting
medical imaging equipment
medical software
motors
plastics
railway locomotives
silicones

Revenue $152.363 Billion USD (2004)

Employees ~315,000 (2004)

Website General Electric

The General Electric Company, or GE (NYSE: GE) is a multinational technology and services company. Going into 2005, it was the world's largest corporation in terms of market capitalization [1]. It should not be confused with The General Electric Company plc, which was renamed Marconi plc in 1999.

In the 1960s, peculiarities in U.S. tax laws and accounting practices made it fashionable to assemble conglomerates. GE, which was a conglomerate long before the term was coined, is one of the very few corporations to achieve great success with this kind of organization.

History

In 1876, Thomas Alva Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Out of the laboratory was to come perhaps the most famous invention of all—a successful development of the incandescent electric lamp. By 1890, Edison had organized his various businesses into the Edison General Electric Company.

In 1879, Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston formed the rival Thomson-Houston Electric Company. It merged with various companies and was later led by Charles A. Coffin, a former shoe manufacturer from Lynn, Massachusetts. Mergers with competitors and the patent rights owned by each company put them into dominant positions in the electrical industry. As businesses expanded, it became increasingly difficult for either company to produce complete electrical installations relying solely on their own technology. In 1892, these two major companies combined, in a merger arranged by financier J. P. Morgan, to form the General Electric Company, with its headquarters in Schenectady, New York.

In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly-formed Dow Jones Industrial Average. GE is the only one that remains today.

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was founded by GE and American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) in 1919 to further international radio. General Electric was one of the eight major computer companies (with IBM - the largest, Burroughs, Scientific Data Systems, Control Data Corporation, Honeywell, RCA and UNIVAC) through most of the 1960s. GE had an extensive line of general purpose and special purpose computers. Among them were the GE 200, GE 400, and GE 600 series general purpose computers, the GE 4010, GE 4020, and GE 4060 real time process control computers, and the Datanet 30 message switching computer. A Datanet 600 computer was designed, but never sold. It has been said that GE got into the computer manufacturing business because in the 1950s they were the largest user of computers outside of the United States federal government. In 1970 GE sold its computer division to Honeywell.

In 1986, GE re-acquired RCA, primarily for the NBC television network. The rest was sold to various companies, including Bertelsmann and Thomson.

In 2004, GE bought the television and movie assets of Vivendi Universal and became the third largest media conglomerate in the world. The new company was named NBC Universal. Also in 2004, GE completed the spinoff of most of its life and mortgage insurance assets into an independent company, Genworth Financial, based in Richmond, Virginia. In that same year, GE also acquired the credit card unit of the department store Dillard's for $1.25 billion.

In 2005, General Electric bought the financial assets of the Canadian airplane manufacturer Bombardier for $1.4 billion [2]

In 2006, General Electric completed the $1.2 billion acquisition of IDX Systems, a medical software company

Today

GE is an enormous multinational industrial company headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut. The company describes itself as composed of a number of primary business units or "businesses." Each "business" is itself a vast enterprise, any of which would, even as a standalone company, rank in the Fortune 500. The list of GE businesses varies over time as the result of acquisitions, divestitures and reorganizations.

GE subsidiaries

Access Distribution
GE Advanced Materials
GE Capital IT Solutions
GE Capital Rail Services
GECAS
GE Commercial Finance
GE Consumer & Industrial
GE Consumer Finance
GE Energy
GE Engine Services, Inc.
GE Equipment Services
GE Fanuc Automation North America, Inc.
GE Financial Assurance Holdings, Inc.
GE Franchise Finance Corporation
GE Global Research
GE Healthcare
GE Infrastructure
GE Inspection Technologies
GE Insurance
GE Money
GE Osmonics
GE SeaCo SRL
GE Security
GE Small Business Finance Corporation
GE Supply
GE Transportation
Global Nuclear Fuel - Japan Co., Ltd.
HPSC, Inc.
Instrumentarium Corporation
MRA Systems, Inc.
NBC Universal, Inc.
Transport International Pool Inc.
WMC Mortgage Corp.

Through these businesses, GE participates in a wide variety of markets including the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity, lighting, industrial automation, medical imaging equipment, motors, railway locomotives, aircraft jet engine, aviation services and materials such as plastics, silicones and abrasives. It was co-founder and is 80% owner (with Vivendi Universal) of NBC Universal, the National Broadcasting Company. Through GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Services, and GE Insurance it offers a range of financial services as well. It has a presence in over 100 countries.

Interestingly, over half of GE's revenue is derived from financial services, ostensibly making it a financial company with a manufacturing arm. It is also one of the largest lenders in countries other than the United States, such as Japan. Even though the first wave of conglomerates (such as ITT, Ling-Temco-Vought, Tenneco, etc) fell by the wayside by the mid-1980s, in the late 1990s, another wave (consisting of Westinghouse, Tyco, and others) tried and failed to emulate GE's success.

GE's Brand

General Electric has one of, if not the, most valuable corporate brand in the world. CEO Jeffrey Immelt had the new brand commissioned in 2004, after he took the reigns as chairman, in order to unify all the diversified businesses of GE. The brand included a change of the corporate color palette, small modifications to the GE Logo, a new customized font, called GE Inspira, and a new slogan, "imagination at work". The new brand requires many headlines to be lowercased and adds visual "white space" to their documents and advertising to promote an open and approachable company. The new brand was designed by Wolff Olins and can be seen on GE's corporate website. GE BrandCentral[3] is a website dedicated to managing the brand and requests for font and logo usage. Unfortunately, it is closed to the public.

Jack Welch

The CEO from 1981-2001 was Jack Welch, who many regard as one of the premier business managers of his era. Nicknamed "Neutron Jack", he presided over a 28-fold increase in earnings (on a 5-fold increase in revenue) with his policy (referred to by detractors as "rank and yank") of sacking the worst performing 10% of his staff every year. In running GE's many diverse businesses he maintained a policy of only keeping those businesses which were #1 or #2 within their respective industries. In 1987, GE was the United States' second largest nuclear power company and third largest producer of nuclear weapons systems. Jack Welch introduced the use of the six sigma quality system, originally developed at Motorola, within GE.

Corporate information

The company's market capitalization ([4]) is almost $100 billion higher than that of Microsoft ([5]). In 2004, GE was named number one company for employers and employees on the Forbes 500 Global Player list.

Jeffrey Immelt succeeded Jack Welch as CEO of General Electric and holds that office today. Current members of the board of directors of General Electric are: James Cash, Jr., Sir William Castell (Deputy Chairman, and Executive Officer), Dennis Dammerman, Ann Fudge, Claudio Gonzalez, Jeffrey Immelt, Andrea Jung, A.G. Lafley, Robert Lane, Ralph Larsen, Rochelle Lazarus, Sam Nunn, Roger Penske, Robert Swieringa, Douglas Warner, and Bob Wright.

Superfund Sites

General Electric has agreed to pay the Environmental Protection Agency $110 million dollars in order to clean up three superfund sites contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The three superfund sites are composed of a 200 mile stretch along the Hudson River, a section of the Housatonic River in Pittsfield, MA and a transformer facility near Rome, GA. General Electric had initially spent $120 million between 1990 and 2005 with public relations and lobbying firms in order to fight responsibility for cleanup costs.[6]

Analyst coverage

Germanotta, Jeffrey (William Blair & Company, L.L.C.)
Cornell, Robert (Lehman Brothers)
Parent, Nicole (Credit Suisse First Boston)
Dray, Deane (Goldman Sachs)

Financials

SEC filings including 10-k

External links

General Electric's website
Hotpoint - A Brief Independence

Source:-Wikipedia

Dell, Inc.

2006-03-08T08:10:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NASDAQ: DELL)

Founded Austin, Texas (1984) (as PC's Limited)

Location Round Rock, Texas, United States

Key people
Michael Dell, Founder & Chairman
Kevin Rollins, President & CEO

Industry Computer hardware

Products
Desktops
Servers
Laptops
Peripherals
Printers

Revenue $49.205 billion USD (2004)

Employees 63,700

Website Dell

History

Michael Dell, while still a student at the University of Texas at Austin, founded the company as "PC's [sic] Limited" in 1984 to sell IBM-compatible computers built from stock components. He founded the company on the principle that by selling personal computer systems directly to customers, PC's Limited could best understand their needs and provide the most effective computing solutions to meet those needs.

In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design (the "Turbo PC"), which contained an Intel 8088-compatible processor running at a speed of 8 MHz. It advertised the systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers, and custom-assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. This offered buyers prices lower than those of retail brands, but with greater convenience than assembling the components themselves. Although not the first company to use this model, PC's Limited became one of the first to succeed with it. Michael Dell dropped out of school to run the business full-time. The company grossed more than $6 million in its first year.

In 1987, PC's Limited set up its first on-site-service programs in order to compensate for the lack of local retailers prepared to act as service centers. Also in 1987, the company set up its first operations in the United Kingdom, eleven more international operations followed within the next four years. In 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million on its initial public offering day. The company changed its name to "Dell Computer Corporation" in 1988.

In 1990, Dell Computer tried selling its products indirectly through warehouse clubs and computer superstores, but met with little success, and the company re-focused on its more successful direct-to-consumer sales model. In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies. In 1999 Dell overtook Compaq to become the largest seller of personal computers in the United States of America. To recognize the company's expansion beyond computers, the stockholders approved changing the company name to "Dell Inc." at the annual company meeting in 2003. In March 2004 Dell attempted to expand by tapping into the multimedia and home entertainment markets with the introduction of televisions, handhelds, and digital jukeboxes. Dell has also produced Dell-brand printers for home and small-office use. On December 22, 2004, the company announced that it would build a new assembly plant near Winston-Salem, North Carolina; the city and county provided Dell with $37.2 million in incentive packages; the state provided approximately $250 million in incentives and tax breaks.

In January 2005 the share of sales coming from international markets increased, as revealed in the company's press releases for the first two quarters of its fiscal 2005 year. In November 2005, BusinessWeek magazine published an article titled "It's Bad to Worse at Dell" about shortfalls in projected earnings and sales, with a worse-than-predicted third-quarter financial performance - a bad omen for a company that routinely underestimated its earnings. Dell acknowledged that faulty capacitors on the motherboards of the Optiplex GX270 and GX280 had already cost the company $300 million. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kevin Rollins attributed the bad performance partially to Dell's focus on low-end PCs.

In an effort to improve support and reduce long wait-times, Dell has opened a pilot-project of Dell-owned/operated technical support operating out of Edmonton, Alberta. Supporting both Dell and non-Dell hardware and software, this site has quickly begun taking over from outsourced call centers. As of 2006 Dell Inc. has started to divert some of its support work to another Canadian office in Ottawa, Ontario. Dell International Services functions as a support division of Dell.

Dell received a 100% rating in the third (2004) Corporate Equality Index released by the Human Rights Campaign group to evaluate gender-preference practices of commercial bodies in the United States of America. In February 2005, Dell appeared in first place in a ranking of the "Most Admired Companies" published by Fortune magazine.

In October 2005, Dell International Services opened its Customer Call Center Operations in Manila, Philippines. The spoken accent of operators emerged as a customer-service issue. Some people believe that a Filipino accent more closely resembles an American accent than the accent used in India.

Dell has operated a domestic call center in Twin Falls, Idaho since 2002.

Products

The corporation markets specific brand names to different consumer segments. It typically sells the OptiPlex, Latitude, and Precision names to medium-sized and large business customers, where the company's advertising emphasizes long life-cycles, reliability and serviceability. The Dimension, Inspiron, and XPS brands have an orientation towards consumers, students, and small home office environments, emphasizing value, performance and expandability. Dell recently re-introduced the Dell XPS brand to target the lucrative gaming market. Dell XPS desktop systems use silver (rather than the black cases found on newer Dell PCs). Dell has also expanded into non-computer products, including the Dell Digital Jukebox ("Dell DJ") (a portable digital audio player), USB keydrives, LCD televisions, Windows Mobile-powered PDAs, and printers.

Dell uses several brand-names for its product ranges, including:

OptiPlex for office Desktop computer systems
Dimension for consumer Desktop systems
Latitude for commercially-focused laptops
Inspiron for consumer laptops
Precision for workstation systems and high-performance laptops
PowerEdge for larger corporate servers
PowerVault for direct-attach and some network-attached storage (NAS)
Dell EMC for storage area networks
XPS for enthusiast/high-performance systems
Axim for PDAs utilizing Microsoft's Windows Mobile
Dell Digital Jukebox (DJ) MP3 Player for MP3 fanatics
Dell LCD/Plasma TVs and Projectors for HDTV and Monitor enthusiasts
Dell on call - extended support services (mainly for the removal of spyware and of viruses)
Dell currently ships Microsoft Windows XP as the operating system of choice for most of its new computers, but it also offers Red Hat and SUSE for servers. Dell has sought to offer "bare-bones" computers without any pre-installed software - at significantly lower prices. Due to Dell's licensing contracts with Microsoft, customers can obtain such systems only upon request and Dell has to ship them with a FreeDOS disk included in the box and issue a so-called Windows refund or a merchandise credit after sale of the system at the "regular" retail price.

On Dell's Windows machines the manufacturer bundles a large quantity of software. Some have accused Dell of shipping spyware, specifically Myway Search Assistant and claim that its technical support team have instructions not to support its de-installation. Although the Dell support forum provides instructions for removing this software, they seem extremely complicated. One cannot uninstall the software using the Microsoft Windows "Add/Remove Programs" utility.

Dell openly supported offering Apple Computer's new Intel version of its Mac OS X operating system, but to this point Apple has stated the OS will only run on Macintosh machines, and will not agree to licensing Mac OS X to Dell.

Business model

Dell sells all its products both to consumers and corporate customers, using a direct-sales model via the Internet and the telephone network. Dell also showcases its consumer-oriented products at kiosks in major shopping malls. Dell maintains a negative cash conversion cycle through use of this model. The Internet has significantly enhanced Dell’s business model, making it easier for customers to contact Dell directly. Other computer manufacturers, including Gateway and Compaq, have adapted this same business model.

Organization

A Board of Directors of nine people runs the company. Both Michael Dell, the founder of the company, and Kevin Rollins, the CEO, serve on the board. Other board members include Donald Carty, William Gary, Judy Lewent, Klaus Luft, Alex Mandl, Michael A. Miles and Sam Nunn. Shareholders elect the nine board members at meetings, and those board members who do not get a majority of votes must submit a resignation to the board, which will subsequently choose whether or not to accept the resignation. The board of directors usually sets up five committees which have oversight over specific matters. These committees include the Audit Committee, which handles accounting issues, including auditing and reporting; the Compensation Committee, which approves compensation for the CEO and other employees of the company; the Finance Committee, which handles financial matters such as proposing mergers and acquisitions; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters including nomination of the board; and the Antitrust Compliance Committee, which attempts to prevent company practices from violating antitrust laws.

The corporate structure and management of Dell extends beyond the board of directors. The Dell Global Executive Management Committee sets the strategic direction for how the corporation keeps customers at the forefront, from designing and manufacturing computer systems to offering products that meet customers' requirements to providing the sufficient service and support. Dell has regional senior vice presidents for countries other than the United States, including Paul Bell for EMEA and Stephen J. Felice for Asia/Japan. Other officers include Martin Garvin, senior vice president for worldwide procurement, and Susan E. Sheskey, vice president and chief information officer

Marketing

Dell advertisements have appeared in several types of media including television, the Internet, magazines, catalogs and in newspapers. Dell constantly lowers product prices at all times of the year, offering free bonus products (such as Dell printers) and free shipping to encourage more sales.

A popular television and print ad campaign in the USA in the early 2000s featured the actor Ben Curtis playing the part of "Steven", a lightly mischievous blond-haired kid who came to the assistance of bereft computer purchasers. Each television advertisement usually ended with Steven's catch-phrase: "Dude, you're gettin' a Dell!". Dell fired Curtis shortly after his arrest for marijuana possession outside Central Park, New York in 2003, however, they deny that the firing resulted from his arrest, stating that the "Steven" ads had run for three years and characterizing them as "stale".

A subsequent advertising campaign featured interns at Dell headquarters.

Competition

Dell's major competitors include Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, Packard Bell, Sun Microsystems, Gateway/Emachines, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba. Enthusiast market competition takes place with Alienware, Falcon Northwest, WidowPC and other manufacturers. In 2004, Dell had a 17.9% share of the worldwide personal-computer market, compared to HP with 15.8%. By using their business model, Dell attempts to undercut competitors and offer consumers a more attractive choice of personal computers and other equipment. In August 2003, Dell lowered product prices by 22% in an attempt to generate more sales, however this disappointed shareholders, sending Dell shares down by 2% in late Wall-Street trading, amid fears of a sector-wide slump

Criticism

Dell has a policy of only selling computers with Intel processors, and does not offer AMD-based systems. Commentators have speculated that Dell may have signed an exclusive arrangement with Intel, possibly in return for discount prices or for advertising incentives. Dell's major competitors offer a choice of either AMD or Intel processors. This has cost Dell some sales of higher-end desktop systems, especially in the content-creation field, where benchmarks show AMD processors function better for most render-intensive 64-bit applications. Dell laptops, notabily the 5100 series, also have the tendency to overheat and shut down: Dell issued a little-publicised recall for this product.

In 2005, two class-action lawsuits accused Dell of marketing with bait-and-switch tactics and of conspiring with its financial unit to offer zero percent financing, only to revoke the offer after the return period had expired.

Source:-Wikipedia

General Motors

2006-03-02T07:50:00.000-09:00

General Motors Headquarters, Renaissance Center, Detroit, Michigan.

General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM), also known as GM, is a United States-based automobile maker with worldwide operations and brands including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Vauxhall.

Chevrolet and GMC divisions produce trucks, as well as passenger vehicles. Other brands include AC Delco and Allison Transmission. GM also has a 8% stake in Isuzu and a 20% stake in Suzuki in Japan and a joint venture with AvtoVAZ in Russia. In December 2003, it acquired Delta in South Africa, in which it had taken a 45 % stake in 1997, and which is now a fully-owned subsidiary, General Motors South Africa. General Motors is also a majority shareholder (50.9%) in GM Daewoo.

GM's headquarters are in the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan. The company is the world's largest vehicle manufacturer and employs over 340,000 people. In 2001, GM sold 8.5 million vehicles through all its branches; in 2002, GM sold 15 % of all cars and trucks in the world. They also owned Electronic Data Systems from 1984 to 1996 and, prior to selling it to News Corporation, DirecTV. GM owned Frigidaire from 1918 to 1979

Type Public (NYSE: GM)

Founded 1908

Location Detroit, Michigan; manufacturing facilities in 30 U.S. states and 32 countries

Key people Rick Wagoner, Chairman & CEO

Industry Automotive

Products automobiles engines

Revenue US$193.5 billion USD (2004)

Employees 324,000 (2004)

Website General Motors

History

General Motors (GM) was founded in 1908 in Flint, Michigan as a holding company for Buick, then controlled by William C. Durant, and acquired Oldsmobile later that year. The next year, Durant brought in Cadillac, Elmore, and Oakland. In 1909, General Motors acquired the Rapid Motor Vehicle Company of Pontiac, Michigan, the predecessor of GMC Truck. A Rapid became the first truck to conquer Pikes Peak in 1909.

During the 1920s and 1930s, General Motors bought out the bus company Yellow Coach, helped create Greyhound bus lines, replaced intercity train transport with buses, and established subsidiary companies to buy out streetcar companies and replace the rail-based services with buses. GM formed United Cities Motor Transit in 1932 (see General Motors streetcar conspiracy for additional details).

General Motors bought the internal combustion engined railcar builder Electro-Motive Corporation and its engine supplier Winton Engine in 1930, renaming both as the General Motors Electro-Motive Division. Over the next twenty years, diesel-powered locomotives and trains – the majority built by GM – largely replaced other forms of traction on American railroads. (During World War II, these engines were also important in American submarines and destroyer escorts.) Electro-Motive was sold in early 2005.

On December 31, 1955, General Motors became the first American corporation to make over one billion dollars in a year.

After GM's massive lay-offs hit Flint, Michigan a strike began at the General Motors parts factory in Flint on June 5, 1998, which quickly spread to five other assembly plants and lasted seven weeks.

At one point GM was the largest corporation ever in the United States, in terms of its revenues as a percent of GDP. In 1953 Charles Erwin Wilson, then GM president, was named by Eisenhower as Secretary of Defense. When he was asked during the hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee if as secretary of defense he could make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors, Wilson answered affirmatively but added that he could not conceive of such a situation "because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa". Later this statement was often garbled when quoted, suggesting that Wilson had said simply, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." At the time, GM was the one of the largest employers in the world – only Soviet state industries employed more people.

General Motors Hughes Electronics

Hughes Electronics was formed in 1985 when Hughes Aircraft was sold by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to General Motors for $5 billion. General Motors merged Hughes Aircraft with its Delco Electronics unit to form GM Hughes Electronics (GMHE). The group then consisted of:

Hughes Aircraft
Delco Electronics
Hughes Space and Communications
Hughes Network Systems
Hughes Training
In August 1992 GM Hughes Electronics purchased General Dynamics' Missile Systems business. In 1994 Hughes Electronics introduced DirecTV, the world's first high-powered direct broadcast satellite service. In 1995 Hughes Electronic's Hughes Space and Communications division became the largest supplier of commercial satellites. Also in 1995 the group purchased Magnavox Electronic Systems from the Carlyle Group. In 1996 Hughes Electronics and PanAmSat agree to merge their fixed satellite services into a new publicly held company, also called PanAmSat with GM Hughes Electronics as majority shareholder.

In 1997 GM transferred Delco Electronics to its Delphi Automotive Systems business. Late in the year the defense operations of Hughes Electronics (Hughes Aircraft and missile business) were merged with Raytheon.

Hughes Space and Communications remained independent until 2000, when it was purchased by Boeing and became Boeing Satellite Systems.

In 2000, the remaining parts of Hughes Electronics: DirecTV, DirecTV Latin America, PanAmSat and Hughes Network Systems, were purchased by NewsCorp and renamed The DirecTV Group. NewsCorp sold PanAmSat to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) in August 2004.

Corporate structure and issues

Current members of the board of directors of General Motors are: Percy Barnevik, Erskine Bowles, John Bryan, Armando Codina, George Fisher, Karen Katen, Kent Kresa, Ellen Kullman, Philip Laskawy, Jerome York, Eckhard Pfeiffer, and Rick Wagoner (chairman). York was elected to the board on February 6, 2006 to represent Kirk Kerkorian, as E. Stanley O'Neal stepped down.

Rick Wagoner is also the chief executive officer of the company (since June 1, 2000), succeeding John F. Smith, Jr.

Social policies

General Motors was named one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers in 2004 by Working Mothers magazine.

Due to its highly compensated workforce GM has the highest health care and labor costs in the industry, and some analysts have criticized the company for this.

Subsidies

In March 2005, the Government of Canada "gave C$200 million to General Motors for its Ontario plants, and last fall it awarded C$100 million to Ford Motor Co. to expand their Canadian auto production, provide jobs and contribute to the economy," according to Jim Harris. With additional subsidies promised to non-North American auto companies like Toyota, Premier Dalton McGuinty said the money the province and Ottawa are pledging for the project is well-spent. His government has committed C$400 million, including the latest Toyota package of C$125 million, to the province's automobile sector, which helped finance $5 billion worth of industry projects.

Marketing problems

GM corporate management has since 1955 allowed the gradual blurring of the distinctions between its own divisions. These divisions were once each targeted to specific market segments and, despite some shared components, each vehicle distinguished itself from comparable GM stablemates with unique styling and (to some extent) bespoke technology. The shared components and common corporate management created substantial economies of scale while the distinctions between the divisions created an orderly upgrade path, with an entry-level buyer starting out with a practical and economical Chevrolet and, (assuming progressive prosperity of the buyer), moving through offerings of the several divisions until the purchase of a Cadillac. The divisions were not competing with each other so much but rather they were passing along the same customer, who would thus always be buying a GM product, with the profits flowing to this single corporation.

Before 1955:

GMC Truck - produced strictly utilitarian commercial vehicles over a wide range of capacities
Chevrolet - an entry-level brand offering high utility at low price, with some light trucks and panel vans
Pontiac - a brand that sold solid, extremely quiet vehicles (these used a side valve straight eight), attractive to a modest and reserved lower middle class
Oldsmobile - a leading technical innovator with the first production automatic transmission, this eventually became GM's first "performance" division, introducing the industry's first short-stroke, high-compression overhead-valve V8 (the "Oldsmobile Rocket") in 1949
Buick - a more expensive and luxurious brand for the upper middle class (often called the "doctor's car") with four models - the small body/engine Special and Super and the larger Century and Roadmaster, each emphasizing a soft ride, upscale interior, and in the late 1940's an available "shiftless" automatic transmission and hydraulic power windows
Cadillac - the self styled "standard of luxury", with large production competition only from rival Packard
The postwar industry became enamored with the concept of "planned obsolescence", implemented by both technical and styling innovations, with a three year product cycle typical within the industry. In this cycle, a new basic body shell is introduced and then modified for the next two years by minor styling changes. GM, Ford, and Chrysler competed vigorously in this new environment.

By 1957, with a "horsepower race" active in the U.S. industry, Pontiac became somewhat performance-minded, rivaled by some specific Buick models (the Century for example), completing the evolution in the early and mid 1960's with the Bonneville and the GTO, with Oldsmobiles mostly later becoming soft, comfortable, and (for larger families) practical vehicles. High performance vehicles were available from all of the divisions, peaking in 1970 and ending with the imposition of anti-smog technologies that severely impacted performance, drivability, and efficiency across the industry in the early 1970's.

By the late 1960s, most of GM's vehicles were built upon a few common platforms and in the 1970s, began to use nearly identical body panel stampings, differing only in internal and external trim items. This was seen especially in the compact passenger vehicles offered by the divisions.

Beginning in the 1980's, GM frequently "rebadged" one division's successful vehicle into several models across the divisions, all positioned close to one another in the market place. Thus, a new GM model's main competition might be another model spawned off the same platform. This led to so-called market "cannibalization", where GM's respective divisions spent time stealing sales from one another, while other more co-ordinated efforts (notably from the Japanese manufacturers) were allowed to increase their market penetration. For instance, the company's GMT360 midsized light truck platform has, since its inception in 2002, spawned the basic Chevrolet Trailblazer, an extended version of the Trailblazer, the Oldsmobile Bravada, the GMC Envoy, the Envoy XL (an extended Envoy with a reconfigurable tailgate) and later, the Isuzu Ascender, Buick Rainier, and Saab 9-7X. Though each model had a more or less unique mission, without bespoke engine choices or radically different suspension settings and trim choices, the cars can hardly be told apart.

Critics have suggested that this progressive blurring of well-defined brands has been a large contributor the late 20th and early 21st century market failures of GM.

During the 1980's and later GM divisions had market issues concerning quality - not that the vehicles produced were especially bad but rather that they did not compare well to foreign competition in matters of fit and finish, durability of sheet metal, paint (which was not at all durable for several years after a formulation change), and plastic components.

In 2004, GM redirected resources from the development of new sedans to an accelerated refurbishment of their light trucks and SUVs for introduction as 2007 models in early 2006. Shortly after this decision, fuel prices increased by over 50 % and this in turn affected both the trade-in value of used vehicles and the perceived desirability of new offerings in these market segments. The current marketing plan is currently to extensively tout these revised vehicles as offering the best fuel economies in their class (of vehicle), although such advantages are expected to be minor until the introduction of new hybrid light trucks in 2007, with projected 25% mileage improvements. In contrast, Ford, GM's primary domestic competitor, has emphasized building more and better passenger cars with attractive styling, features, and quality, with profitability flowing from lower production costs through reduction of excess plant capacity and firm consumer demand, which enables avoidance of marketing incentives (such as low or zero interest, cash back, or free or low cost added accessory, appearance, and other packages).

Financial woes

As is the case with other U. S. automobile manufacturers, international exchange rates tend to favor Japanese and Korean competitors. The expected future entry of China into the U. S. automotive market is likely to be advantaged by unrealistic currency exchange ratios that have become a structural problem owing to the Chinese government's extensive purchase of U. S. government debt in the form of bonds. European manufactures are somewhat disadvantaged by over-regulation. Irrespective of these various manufacturing conditions, various foreign manufacturers have demonstrated an ability to compete in the U.S. market with vehicles assembled in various U.S. states and using a substantial portion of domestic content. Such plants are advantaged over GM and Ford through the employment of a younger, nonunion, and more generally healthy workforce.

General motors has extensive "legacy" costs in pensions and health care costs from retirees, some of these obligations taken at a time when GM had a much larger share of the domestic U.S. market. GM has also committed itself (through union agreements) to pay ongoing wages to non-working employees displaced by automation (the so-called Jobs Bank). The subsequent loss of market share due to marketing and quality problems has severely impacted GM's ability to carry these obligations.

In April 2005, General Motors posted a US$1.1-billion loss, for the first quarter of that year. Its debt was also downgraded to junk bond status. GM announced plans to cut 25,000 jobs in the United States, and included plans to shut down one of the Oshawa, Ontario, plants by 2008.

By November 2005, within the first nine months of the year, GM had posted a near $4 billion loss. On November 21, 2005, GM had announced a revised plan of increased cuts. These cuts went from 25,000 to 30,000 employees, or 9% of its labor force. GM also increased the number of plant closings. Originally, the company planned eight plant closings; the new plan calls for the closing of twelve facilities.

In December, 2005, Standard and Poor's further downgraded GM bonds to "B", with the observation that it is "now dubious" whether the new line of SUVs and trucks would return GM's North American auto business to profitability (WSJ US edition, 13 December 2005, p. A3).

On December 21, 2005 Toyota Motor Corp announced that it would produce 9.06 million vehicles for 2006. Analysts estimate that GM will only produce around 8.825 million cars for 2006, giving up the title of the world's largest auto producer. GM has held the title for 74 consecutive years without a doubt. However, GM's Wagoner is confident that GM will remain #1.

In February 2006, GM decided to slash its annual dividend to $1.00 per share. GM had resisted the move for some time. However, the reduction will save GM about $565 million in cash each year.

Alternative vehicles

General Motors has long worked on alternative-technology vehicles, but has repeatedly failed to deliver them in a profitable way. The company was the first to use turbochargers and was an early proponent of V6 engines in the 1960s, but quickly lost interest as the muscle car race took hold. They demonstrated [1] gas turbine vehicles powered by kerosene, an area of interest throughout the industry in the late 1950's, but despite extensive thermal recycling (developed by Chrysler) the fuel consumption was too high and starting torque too low for everyday use. They were also an early licensee of Wankel engine technology, even developing the Chevrolet Monza around the powerplant, but abandoned the alternative engine configuration in view of the 1973 oil crisis. In the 1970s and 1980s, GM pushed Diesel engines and cylinder deactivation technologies to disastrous results due to poor durability in the Oldsmobile diesels (this was a modified gasoline engine) and drivability issues in the Cadillac 4-6-8 variable cylinder engines.

In 1996, GM introduced the EV1, the first modern mass-produced electric car. Despite the positive publicity generated by this vehicle, the company never spread the technology beyond California and Arizona, and pulled the plug on the program in 2003.

GM was also an early innovator in hybrid vehicle development, building Diesel-electric trains since the 1930s and buses since the 1990s (but without stored energy recovery), but did not introduce a true hybrid passenger car until 2004. Their earlier hybrid pickup truck was such a mild application of the technology that many criticized it for being not a hybrid at all. The 2006 Saturn VUE Green Line will be the first hybrid passenger vehicle from GM, but it too is a mild design. GM has hinted at new hybrid technologies to be employed that will be optimized for higher speeds such as are encountered in freeway driving. As a great bulk of GM's fleet fuel consumption is by high fuel consuming light trucks and SUVs, a modest improvement in their mileage applied across this large fleet (say twelve to fifteen percent) would in fact conserve a great amount of refined fuels - far more fuel than would be saved by a limited number of specialty hybrids similar to the Toyota Prius.

Rather than effectively deliver hybrid and electric vehicles at the present time, GM has extensively touted its research and prototype development of hydrogen powered vehicles, to be produced at some unspecified future time and using a support infrastructure yet to be built. Since production and use of hydrogen from fossil fuels is at present about 1/6 as efficient as direct use of the fuel (e.g, compressed natural gas), this is a future dependent upon the availability of extremely low cost electricity - as might be produced at some indefinite future time by speculative power sources such as nuclear fusion.

GM in China

General Motors is the top-selling foreign auto maker in China, with 11.2% of the total market there. The Buick brand is especially strong, led by the Buick Excelle subcompact. Cadillac initiated sales in China in 2004, starting with imports. GM pushed the Chevrolet brand there in 2005 as well, transferring the formerly-Buick Sail to that marque. The company manufactures most of its China-market vehicles locally, through its Shanghai GM joint venture. The SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile joint-venture is also successful selling trucks and vans under the Wuling marque.

External links

Official Website
GMAC Financial Services
GMability, GM's corporate responsibility site
GM's K-12 education site
GMForums GM Enthusiast forum
GM's Fastlane blog
Corporate history
General Motors Holden VL Turbo
Cheers & Gears GM Enthusiast forum
GMInsidenews GM Enthusiast forum
S10Forum GM S-series Truck Enthusiast forum
GM picture galleries
Automotive industry portal with General Motor news

Source:- wikipedia

Wal-Mart Stores

2006-02-24T07:53:00.000-09:00

Type Public (NYSE: WMT)

Slogan
Wal-Mart. Always Low Prices. Always. (U.S.)
WE SELL FOR LESS every day! (Canada)

Founded Rogers, Arkansas, 1962

Location Bentonville, Arkansas, USA

Key people
Sam Walton (1918-1992), Founder
H. Lee Scott, CEO
S. Robson Walton, Chairman

Industry Retail (Department & Discount)

Products
Wal-Mart Discount Stores
Wal-Mart Supercenter
Sam's Club
Neighborhood Markets
ASDA

Revenue $288 billion USD ($29B FY 2005)

Employees 1.7 million

Website Walmart

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) was founded by Sam Walton in 1962. It is the largest retailer in the world and one of the largest companies in the world based on revenue; in 2004 it was the largest, but the recent rise in oil prices has taken at least one oil company past it. For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2005, Wal-Mart reported net income of US $10.3 billion on US $285 billion of sales revenue (3.6% profit margin). It is the largest private employer in the United States, Mexico and Canada. It holds an 8.9 percent retail store market share, with $8.90 out of every $100 spent in U.S. retail stores being spent at Wal-Mart.

Timeline

1962: First Wal-Mart store opens in Rogers, Arkansas
1969: The company incorporates as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. on October 31, 1969.
1972: Wal-Mart listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
1983: First Sam's Club opens in Midwest City, Oklahoma.
1987: Wal-Mart completes largest private satellite communication system in the U.S.
1988: First Supercenter opens in Washington, Missouri.
1990: Wal-Mart becomes nation's largest retailer.
1991: The first store outside of the U.S. opens, in Mexico City.
1994: Wal-Mart acquires 122 Woolco stores in Canada.
1996: Wal-Mart enters China through a joint-venture agreement.
1997: Wal-Mart replaces Woolworth on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Woolworth's Square One Shopping Centre location in Canada becomes the largest Wal-Mart store in the world, at 220,000 square feet (20,000 m²).
1997: Wal-Mart becomes largest private employer in the United States, with 680,000 employees worldwide.
1997: Wal-Mart has its first $100 billion sales year.
1998: First Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market opens
1999: Wal-Mart has 1,140,000 employees, making it the largest private employer in the world. It acquires the ASDA Group with 229 stores in the United Kingdom.
2003: Wal-Mart sets a single-day sales record of $1.52 billion on Black Friday.
2004: Wal-Mart buys the Amigo supermarket chain in Puerto Rico for $17 million.
2004: Wal-Mart employees in Jonquière, Quebec, Canada vote in favor of becoming the first unionized Wal-Mart in North America. Five months later, Wal-Mart announces that it would close the store, citing poor sales.
2005: Wal-Mart seeks to expand to urban markets, most notably New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
2006: Wal-Mart is built in the town of Napanee, Ontario after years of discussion.
2006: Wal-Mart required to sell the morning after pill in Massachusetts stores.

Business

Wal-Mart operates discount retail department stores selling a broad range of non-grocery products, though emphasis is now focused on the "Supercenters" which offer a full line of grocery items. Wal-Mart also operates Sam's Club—a "warehouse club" (similar to Costco and BJ's) that sells discounted bulk merchandise to due-paying members.

As of January 2005, Wal-Mart employed 1.3 million people in the United States. Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters are located in Bentonville, Arkansas. Apart from retail locations, it operates 99 Distribution Centers and Transportation Offices in the United States. Internationally, Wal-Mart employs over 410,000 people (excluding Japan) for a company-wide total of 1.7 million employees. Wal-Mart also operates the largest real estate company in the United States, with an entire division devoted to building new stores, selling old stores, and developing shopping centers around its stores.

In addition to its wholly-owned international operations, Wal-Mart owns a 42% stake in The Seiyu Co., Ltd. in Japan, with a proposed US$597 million to increase its stake to 50%. This purchase has been approved by Seiyu Group shareholders and The Seiyu will be consolidated into Wal-Mart International in FYE 2006.

In the past, Wal-Mart operated dot Discount Drugs, Bud's Discount City, Hypermart*USA, OneSource Nutrition Centers, and Save-Co Home Improvement stores. In 1990 Wal-Mart acquired The McLane Company, a foodservice distributor. In 2003 McLane Company was sold to Berkshire Hathaway.

Wal-Mart stock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WMT.

Competition in the United States

Wal-Mart's chief competitors in the discount retail space nationally include Sears Holdings Corporation's Kmart chain and Target, Best Buy, along with many smaller regional chains such as Meijer in the midwest. Wal-Mart's move into the grocery business has also positioned it against major grocery chains such as HEB, Kroger, Albertsons, Publix, Giant Eagle, Safeway and dozens of local grocery chains. Chief competitors of Sam's Club are Costco, which is slightly larger than Sam's in terms of sales, as well as the smaller BJ's Wholesale Club chain operating mainly on the East Coast.

Due to Wal-Mart's success in selling consumer goods and its necessary focus on more expensive items (and larger population areas) to increase revenue, a niche has been carved out of Wal-Mart's dominance by several shrewd retail corporations [2]. By focusing on a small number of low-cost products, and siting their retail operations in extremely convenient locations (primarily very small towns which cannot support a Wal-Mart as well as low-income areas of larger metropolitan areas), retailers such as Family Dollar and Dollar General have successfully competed head-to-head with Wal-Mart for home consumer sales.

Wal-Mart Television Network

The Wal-Mart Television Network is an in-store network showing commercials for products sold in the stores, concert clips and music videos for recording artists products sold in the stores, trailers for upcoming movie releases, and news. According to a New York Times story, it is seen by 130 million people a month, making it the fifth largest network in America, behind NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox

Contributions

In 2004, cash donations to non-profit organizations by Wal-Mart, its employees, and its customers made through Wal-Mart, the Wal-Mart Foundation and the Sam's Club Foundation totaled more than US$170 million. Unlike most corporate donors, Wal-Mart does not provide a figure for its corporate contributions; instead Wal-Mart's reported contributions include those made by its customers in a larger aggregate figure. The typical Supercenter channels $30,000 to $50,000 a year to local causes and events. More than 90 percent of cash donations from Wal-Mart Stores and the Wal-Mart & SAM'S CLUB Foundation target local communities.

After the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster on the United States Gulf Coast, Wal-Mart donated $2 million to the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross and $15 million to the Bush-Clinton Hurricane Katrina Fund for a total of $17 million. These donations made it the largest single corporate contributor. In addition, an estimated $3 million in merchandise was donated to victims in several states, and in some cases the corporation was able to provide supplies before the federal government. An emergency contact website was set up by Wal-Mart to help locate displaced persons, accessible by Internet and at every store in the country. About $1.5 million in emergency aid was given to displaced employees, and employees displaced by the storm were offered work at Wal-Mart locations elsewhere in the country.

According to the November 21, 2005 issue of The Nation, recently both the Arkansas-based company and the Walton family have elevated their charitable giving. The Walton Family Foundation (WFF) gave away $106.9 million in 2003, twice as much as in 2000. Walmart's company political action committee, the second largest corporate donor to the GOP, gave away $2.1 million in 2004, compared to $100,000 in 1994. Also in 2004, Alice Walton donated $2.6 million to the Progress for America PAC, which supported the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. From 1998 through 2003, the WFF contributed $25,000 to the Heritage Foundation, $15,000 to the Cato Institute, $125,000 to the Hudson Institute, $155,000 to the Goldwater Institute, $70,000 to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, $300,000 to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, $185,000 to the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, and $350,000 to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. The WFF has also donated to advocacy groups promoting school privatization, such as a $3 million donation in 2003 to the Knowledge Is Power Program.

Renewable energy experiments

Recently, Wal-Mart has designed two experimental stores [3], one in McKinney, Texas, the other in Aurora, Colorado, which feature wind turbines, photovoltaic solar panels, and biofuel-capable boilers. The buildings also include many other energy and cost-saving technologies. Critics, such as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance [4], while acknowledging these features are an improvement, contend that Wal-Mart's negative environmental impact far outweighs gestures at two stores among several thousand. Driving sprawl, consuming unnecessarily large amounts of land and locating on environmentally sensitive sites are among the complaints.

An environmentally-friendly design for a Wal-Mart in Vancouver, BC, Canada was proposed. This design, too, included wind turbines, geothermal heating and collecting rainwater. However, this proposal was rejected by the city councillors [5] on June 28, 2005 for several reasons including worry over the possible negative impact to small businesses and a potential increase in traffic as customers drive longer distances to go shopping.

Employees

Wal-Mart refers to its employees as "associates," and encourages managers to think of themselves as "servant leaders." Each shift at every store, club, and distribution center (theoretically) starts with a store-wide meeting where managers discuss with hourly employees daily sales figures, company news, and goals for the day.

All Wal-Mart stores in the United States have employees referred to as "People Greeters." They welcome people to the store and help prevent shoplifting. At some stores, these employees inspect the contents of the shopping carts of exiting customers.

Wal-Mart benefits

According to an October 2005 article in BusinessWeek, Walmart's health insurance covers 44% or approximately 572,000 of its 1.3 million U.S. workers.[6] According to Wal-Mart's website, Wal-Mart provides insurance to more than 1 million people.

Financial results

Wal-Mart is now the largest grocery chain in the U.S., with 14 percent of all grocery sales -- nearly twice the sales of Kroger ($95 billion vs. $51 billion). Wal-Mart also does 20 percent of the retail toy business. Sam Walton's family's holdings in Wal-Mart if combined would comprise the nation's largest fortune; at $100 billion combined they are significantly ahead of Bill Gates.

Wal-Mart went public in 1975. Since then its stock has climbed from 5 cents (split adjusted) to a high of $63 in March 2002. Its stock has dropped more than 20% since then, closing under $50 in August 2005.

Different explanations have been offered for this success:

The company has always paid a great deal of attention to site selection; in the company's early years, Sam Walton would fly over small towns in a private plane to identify prospective locations. The company claims it analyzes potential locations to find those that would support "one and a half" stores. Although the intended location was a seemingly small rural town, being up in a plane would reveal a lucrative market if the surrounding communities were taken into account, defying the conventional wisdom that a discount store requires a sizable city. Wal-Mart then promptly moved quickly to pre-empt these discovered locations, since allowing a competitor to locate would likely cause a price war that would make both discount stores unprofitable. Lastly, rural towns were less likely to have organized unions and community activists unlike large urban centres. "This strategy gave Wal-Mart a near monopoly in its local markets and enabled the company to ride out the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s more successfully than its then larger competitors such as K-Mart and Sears."[8]
Wal-Mart benefits from economies of scale in manufacturing and logistics; the purchase of massive quantities of items from its suppliers combined with a very efficient stock control system help make Wal-Mart's operating costs lower than those of its competitors. They are leaders in the field of vendor managed inventory—asking large suppliers to oversee stock control for a category and make recommendations to Wal-Mart buyers. This reduces the overhead of having a large inventory control and buying department. Wal-Mart's vast purchasing power also gives it the leverage to force manufacturers to change their production (usually by creating cheaper products) to suit its wishes: a single Wal-Mart order can easily comprise a double-digit percentage of a supplier's annual output.
One particular aspect of the economy of scale is the aggregation effect, used in other business such as The Home Depot and Wells Fargo, whereby Wal-Mart sells as many different items as possible. This allows the company to grow revenue over its fixed cost base (more sales out of the same store). This is why Wal-Mart began to sell low margin groceries.
Information Systems: Wal-Mart helped push the retail industry to adopt UPC codes and bar-code scanning equipment. Also, Wal-Mart's focus on cost reduction has led to its involvement in a standards effort [9] to use RFID-based Electronic Product Codes to lower the costs of supply chain management. As of June 2004, it has announced plans [10] to require the use of the technology among its top 300 suppliers by January 2006.
Suppliers: A spokesperson for the company told the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 18, 2004 that it imported $15 billion worth of goods from China in the year that ended Jan. 31, 2004. About $7.5 billion were directly imported by Wal-Mart; the other $7.5 came indirectly through suppliers. In the same period net sales reached $256 billion, with $209 billion coming from U.S. operations. U.S. current account imports from China was reported as $152.4 billion during 2003 [11]. Mainland Chinese media place Wal-Mart as their 8th largest trading partner in front of Russia and the UK on the top-10 list.
Cost Control: Wal-Mart watches controllable expenses very closely. Hourly employees can be reprimanded or terminated for having unauthorized overtime. Wal-Mart also squeezes out any inefficiencies in the business, such as reducing paper consumption by using a computerized process.

Public relations

In 2005, Wal-Mart officials embarked on a public relations campaign to counter some of the criticism it receives, through its public relations website as well as through television commercials which show employees who have had a medical emergency and have been sent by Wal-Mart to the Mayo Clinic.

It was reported in the New York Times on November 1, 2005 that in response to increased criticism the public relations firm Edelman had been retained. Edelman has set up an internal "war room", a rapid-response public relations team, staffed with high-profile political operatives to respond to negative media attention. Operatives hired include Michael K. Deaver who formerly worked on behalf of Ronald Reagan, Leslie Dach who worked on behalf of Bill Clinton, and Robert McAdam who worked on behalf of the Tobacco Institute

Economic impact in the United States

As Wal-Mart is an enormously large business, it has a significant impact on economies, especially in the United States. Several studies have been conducted to determined the nature and extent of this effect.

Kenneth E. Stone of Iowa State University has published several studies on Wal-Mart. In 1997, Stone found that small towns "lose up to 47 percent of their retail trade after 10 years of Wal-Mart stores nearby."[13] A study by Russell S. Sobel and Andrea M. Dean, says that the Stone study is flawed, and found that though Wal-Mart openings cause some small businesses to close by offering lower prices, it also creates opportunities for other small businesses and that as a result, "the process of creative destruction unleashed by Wal-Mart has no statistically significant impact on the overall size of the small business sector in the United States" [14] In [2003], Stone collaborated Georgeanne Artz, also of Iowa State University and Albert Myles of Mississippi State University to show that there "are both positive and negative impacts on existing stores in the area where the new supercenter locates."[15]

In 2002, the state of Georgia's survey of children in the state's subsidized health care system, PeachCare, found that Wal-Mart employed more of the parents of these children than any other employer. More than 10,000 children who qualified for the program had parents working at Wal-Mart. The next largest employer employed the parents of less than 800 children in the program.[16]

A 2002 study[17] by Emek Basker of the University of Missouri examined the impact of Wal-Mart on local employment. Basker found that Wal-Mart's entry into a county increased net retail employment in that county by 100 jobs in the short term. Half of this increase disappeared as other retail establishments close or reduce employment over a five-year period "leaving a long-run statistically significant net gain of 50 jobs."

In 2004, the University of California, Berkeley published a study which asserted that Wal-Mart's low wages and benefits resulted in an increased burden on the social safety net, costing California taxpayers $86 million.[18]

A 2005 study by Global Insight that was commission by Wal-mart found that the company has had a positive net economic impact on the U.S. economy (Several notable economists oversaw the study, including both political conservatives and liberals [19]). From 1985-2004, Wal-Mart "can be associated with a cumulative decline of 9.1% in food-at-home prices, a 4.2% decline in commodities (goods) prices, and a 3.1% decline in overall consumer prices" and, that this has saved consumers $263 billion in that time frame ($2329 per household). Also in that time period, it is responsible for the creation of 210,000 net jobs for the economy. The study indicates that "nominal wages are 2.2% lower, but given that consumer prices are 3.1% lower, real disposable income is 0.9% higher than it would have been in a world without Wal-Mart." (Global Insight Study)

Additional findings from the Global Insight study include: Wal-Mart increased the US economy's overall productivity by three-quarters of a percent by highly efficient distribution systems and pressure on suppliers to be more efficient. Wal-Mart increased net consumer purchasing power by $118 billion in 2004. The efficiencies created 210,000 jobs that would not otherwise exist, but at the same time reduced take-home pay for all retail workers (including the company’s competitors) by $4.7 billion. However, that $4.7 billion is overwhelmingly offset by the $263 billion it has saved Americans from spending from 1985 to 2004, ($2,329 per houshold) according to a Global Insight study. [20] And, this savings has the largest effect on the poor since the average Wal-Mart customer earns $35,000 a year, compared with $50,000 at Target and $74,000 at Costco

Debates over Wal-Mart

Some praise Wal-Mart for benefiting consumers, while other criticise it for being harmful to employees, the community, the economy, and the environment. [22] Specific areas of controversy include the company's product selection; treatment of suppliers, competitors, and employees; impact on local communities, and effects on world trade and globalization.

Jay Nordlinger of the conservative National Review believes [23] criticism of Wal-Mart is more about what Wal-Mart represents; the success of capitalist enterprise and how Wal-Mart is the largest retail store in the world rather than what it actually does. He compares this criticism to the same attacks upon Hummer SUVs while ignoring the issues with many other gas guzzling competitors like old cars the poor could only afford. He believes that Wal-Mart is merely a symbol of capitalism and success that leftists attack in order to associate capitalism with "exploitation" and "unfairness" to further their own big government/socialist objectives

Wal-Mart in popular culture

Billie Letts's 1995 novel Where the Heart Is depicts 17-year-old Novalee Nation moving in to, and giving birth in, an Oklahoma Wal-Mart.
Letts' book was adapted in 2000's Natalie Portman-Ashley Judd film Where the Heart Is. The film, costarring Joan Cusack and Stockard Channing, changes the setting to a Lubbock, Texas Wal-Mart.
Tibby, a character in Ann Brashares 2001 novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, spends her summer working at 'Wallmans'. The character is also included in the 2005 film adaptation, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
A ultra-slick, out-of-control sled ridden by Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) into the toy donation bin outside of a Wal-Mart in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. The scene was filmed outside a Frisco, Colorado Wal-Mart.
A Wal-Mart in the middle of the New Mexico desert serves as a product placement parody in the 2003 animated comedy Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
Sy Parrish, the main character in 2002's One Hour Photo, works at a large discounter called "Sav-Mart"
"Sprawl-Mart" is a big-box retailer in Springfield on Fox's The Simpsons. In the 2005 episode "On A Clear Day I Can't See My Sister", the Sprawl-Mart carries the sign "Not a parody of Wal-Mart". Additionally in another episode when Homer asks Ned Flanders how his Leftorium store is doing he says not too good, due to a "Left*Mart" having moved in. A large Wal-Mart like store is shown in the background. This may be a parody of Wal-Mart, such as its taking on additional markets, like Sam's Club imitating Costco and Neighborhood Markets imitating Albertson's or Safeway.
A Mad TV sketch made a parody of the franchise refering to it as "Walls Mart" poking fun at the bland persistence of Wal*Mart employees.
"Mega-Lo Mart" (with a pronunciation similar to "megalomania") is a large discount retailer on Fox's King of the Hill. When Mega-Lo Mart begins selling propane, Strickland Propane can't compete with their prices, and protagonist Hank Hill loses his job selling propane and propane accessories. Ironically, he is hired to sell propane at Mega Lo Mart until the store is burned down when an inept supervisor causes a gas leak.[24]
A "Wall-Mart" built in Comedy Central's South Park episode "Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes" runs all local stores out of business. The retailer is depicted as a self-aware and independent entity, building itself across the nation to take over everything, and forcing employees and managers to work there against their will. The episode also pokes fun at consumers: South Park residents are forced to shop at Wall-Mart because they are unable to resist its everyday low prices. The town, unable to resist shopping there, tries to burn Wall-Mart, but a crew rebuilds it the following day. Stan and Kyle eventually destroy the Wall-Mart by breaking its heart, a mirror in the electronics department that reflects the image of Stan and Kyle, which shows them that the heart of Wall-Mart is the consumers. South Park residents return to a mom and pop store until it too becomes a big box retailer, which residents promptly burns to the ground.
A JibJab comic called "Big Box Mart" premiered on the October 13, 2005 Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Another cartoon, "This Land", also parodies Wal-Mart.
'Wall 2 Wall Mart' is seen in The Fairly OddParents.
'Stuff-Mart' is a location in the Veggie Tales video "Madame Blueberry," which addresses consumerism.
Former Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry penned a column detailing the early millennium fascination with spending the night in an RV parked outside Wal-Mart.
In Fox's The Simple Life, socialite Paris Hilton appears to be unaware of the existence of Wal-Mart and asks "Do they sell things for walls?" Cohort Nicole Richie comparatively appears more knowledgable, announcing "People hang out at Wal-Mart." In a later episode, the pair visit a Wal-Mart and are shown frolicking, reading magazines on the floor, and "hanging out".
In Kim Possible it is parodied by "Smarty-Mart"
In Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine, a cartoon indicates slaves didn't get paid, and shows a Wal-Mart employee holding this sign: "I work at Wal-Mart and make no money."

Retail operations

List of assets owned by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Wal-Mart operates 5 major retail formats under 3 retail divisions:

Statistics

Wal-Mart Stores, USA

Wal-Mart Discount Stores — Average 100,000 square feet (9,290 m²) and include a selection of general merchandise, including apparel, electronics, health and beauty aids, toys, sporting goods, and household products. The stores also have an in-house-branded food court. There were 1,209 Wal-Mart Discount Stores in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006.
Wal-Mart Supercenter — Average 187,000 square feet (17,400 m²) and combine a standard Wal-Mart Discount Store with a full-line supermarket. (commonly known as big box stores) The stores also typically feature a tire and oil change shop (Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express), Wal-Mart Vision Center, and numerous alcove shops - such as a Wal-Mart Money Center, hair and nail salons, a Movie Gallery video store, an arcade, and a branch from a local bank in the area. The food courts are normally limited-menu McDonald's, though Subway, Dunkin Donuts, and Baskin-Robbins have also been located. Some locations also sell gasoline through Murphy USA. There were 1,980 Wal-Mart Supercenters in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006.
Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market — Average 43,000 square feet (4,000 m²) and include grocery, pharmacy, and limited general merchandise products. There were 101 Neighborhood Markets in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006. The concept will be introduced into Canada in 2006 with 3 stores (one in London, Ontario and 2 in the Greater Toronto Area).
Walmart.com — Online shopping site that offers merchandise different from that in stores. The walmart.com site also offers digital music downloads with digital rights management (DRM) and online photo processing.
Sam's Club — a membership-only wholesale warehouse club focused mainly on serving small business owners. Clubs average 128,000 square feet (11,891 m²). Like some Wal-Mart Supercenters, some Sam's Club locations sell gasoline through Murphy USA. There were 567 Sam's Clubs in the U.S. as of January 31, 2006. Sam's Club also operates in Canada.
Wal-Mart International — operates various formats internationally, including (but not limited to) SAM'S CLUB, Discount Stores, Supercenters, Supermarkets, and restaurants.

Store counts & revenue

Current store counts and revenue for Fiscal Year Ending January 31, 2006 (revenue amounts in U.S. Dollars):

Company Total: 5,509 stores (excludes Seiyu operations) (US$285.2 billion)
Wal-Mart Stores USA (3,857 stores, excluding Puerto Rico) (US$$209.4 billion)
Discount Stores: 1,209
Supercenters: 1,980
Neighborhood Markets: 101
SAM'S CLUB (United States): 567 Clubs (US$63.8 billion total)
International: 1,760 (US$56.3 billion total)
Argentina: 11
Brazil: 156
Canada: 278
China: 56
Germany: 88
South Korea: 16
Mexico: 786
Puerto Rico (United States insular area): 54
United Kingdom (ASDA): 315
ASDA in the United Kingdom is the largest of the international businesses by sales. In Germany, however, after eight years in the market, Wal-Mart's yearly revenue is still less than one-tenth of the leading retailer, EDEKA. The presence of unions, the difficulty obtaining building permits and the high competition are two possible reasons for this lack of success. With Aldi and Lidl there are also two established discounters in the market that drive the same price policy as Wal Mart.

Corporate governance

Executive Board
S. Robson Walton Chairman of the Board
H. Lee Scott, Jr. President, CEO, Director (2004 Compensation: $12,444,790 USD)
Thomas M. Schoewe CFO (2004 Compensation: $2,681,682 USD)

Non Executive Board
David D. Glass Chairman of the Executive Committee, Director
James Breyer Director
Michele Burns Director
Douglas Daft Director
Roland Hernandez Director
John D. Opie Director
Paul Reason Director
Jack Shewmaker Director
Jose Villarreal Director
Jim Walton Director
Christopher J. Williams Director
Linda S. Wolf Director

Senior Management (non-exhaustive list)
John B. Menzer Vice Chairman, responsible for all U.S. operations, including Wal-Mart USA, Sam's Club USA, and home office support groups
Michael T. Duke Vice Chairman, responsible for all International Operations
Eduardo Castro-Wright EVP and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores USA
Linda M. Dillman EVP and CIO
Rollin L. Ford EVP, Logistics and Supply Chain
Lawrence V. Jackson EVP, People Division (Chief HR Officer)
Charles M. Holley, Jr. SVP, CAO, Controller
Thomas D. Hyde EVP, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Corporate Secretary
Eric Zorn EVP and President, Wal-Mart Realty
C. Douglas McMillon EVP; President and CEO, SAM'S CLUB USA
Ray Bracy VP, Corporate Affairs (Interim Director)

Former members of the board of directors of Wal-Mart include Hillary Clinton (1985-1992), who also worked for Wal-Mart as a lawyer, [25] and Tom Coughlin, who went on to be vice chairman [26]. He has since plead guilty to five counts of wire fraud and one count of filing a false tax return related to embezzlement and theft from Wal-Mart while serving as a member of its board

References and External Links

External links

Wal-Mart corporate web sites
Wal-Mart Foundation
Wal-Mart Public Relations site

Source:- Wikipedia

Infosys Technologies Ltd.

2006-02-16T08:07:00.000-09:00

Public:- (NASDAQ: INFY)

Slogan :-Powered by Intellect Driven by Values

Founded :- 1981

Location :- Bangalore, India

Key people:-
N. R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Board and Chief Mentor
Nandan Nilekani, CEO, President and Managing Director

Industry:- Computer Services

Revenue:- $2.2 billion USD

Employees:- ~50,000 (2006)

Website:- Infosys

Infosys Technologies Limited (NASDAQ: INFY) is a global information technology (IT) services, solutions and consulting major started in Pune in 1981 and later shifted to Bangalore, Karnataka.

With over 50,000 employees and revenues of over US $1.75 billion, Infosys is one of India's major IT companies.

Infosys was founded in 1981 by N.R. Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, N.S. Raghavan, S. Gopalakrishnan, S.D. Shibulal and K. Dinesh. Nandan Nilekani is the Managing Director, President and CEO. Narayana Murthy is the Chief Mentor.

In 1999 Infosys attained SEI-CMM level 5. In 2001 and again in 2002, it was rated "Best Employer in India" and "India's Most Respected Company" by the business periodicals Business Today and Business World respectively.

Currently, Infosys employs approximately 46,000 software professionals in about 30 offices worldwide as of 2005, working on varied areas mainly in consulting, software and product development. The main office and development center is located at Electronics City, Bangalore which is one of the largest IT campuses in the world.

Most of the revenue is generated through consulting and IT services. Infosys expects to cross US $ 2 billion in revenues for the fiscal year ending March 2006.

History

Murthy was working for Patni Computer Services(PCS) initially.

Infosys was started in 1981, as a Private Limited Company, under the name of Data Basics Corp as a “body-shop” or on-site developer. of software for US customers. Ltd.Reference:www.infosys.com/about/cases/INFOSYS6%20case%20withchanges.pdf A team of seven experienced software professionals, led by Mr.N. R. Narayana Murthy promoted the company. They brought into the company their wide experience, having handled projects in developed countries like USA, Europe and Canada. There are anecdotal experiences told by Sudha moorthy about cooking and serving food for all the partners of Infosys when the company was taking wings in the initial stages.MICO was their first client.The company’s operations were carried out from a development centre in Bangalore..

Infosys has offices in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Mauritius, The Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland, UAE, UK and USA.

Infosys has development centers in the following cities in India: Bangalore, Hyderabad,, Mangalore, Mysore, Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram and Mohali.

More than 15,000 professionals work at the Electronics City campus in Bangalore. The campus provides amenities like food courts, ATMs and bank extension counters, one of the largest gymnasiums in Asia and a mini golf course among others. It is usual for foreign dignitaries visiting Bangalore to make a visit to the campus.

Around 10 software professionals work in the Delhi development centre (Phase 1). The second phase of the Pune development center covers an area of 110 acres (450,000 m²) and, once fully built up, will have a total capacity of 25,000 professionals.

Timeline

1987 - it set up its first international office in the US in Fremont, California.
1996 - it set up its first office in Europe in Milton Keynes, UK.
1997 - it opened offices in Toronto, Canada.
2000 - it opened offices in France and Hong Kong.
2001 - it opened offices in United Arab Emirates and Argentina.
2002 - it opened new offices in Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland. Infosys start Progeon, its BPO (business process outsourcing) subsidiary.
2003 - it acquires "Expert Information Services" in Australia to form Infosys Technologies Australia.
2003 – it wins a Top Brand with a Conscience award from the Medinge Group of Sweden.
2004 - it set up "Infosys Consulting Inc.", U.S. consulting subsidiary in Texas, US.
2005 - it gets inducted into the Global MAKE Hall of Fame.

Key industries

The key industries covered currently under this practice are:

Engineering Enterprises
Financial Services
Healthcare
Life Sciences
Manufacturing
Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods
Banking and Capital Markets
Travel and Leisure
Media and Entertainment
Technology
Telecom
Transportation¨
Aviation
Utilities & Energy
Enterprise Solutions
Business process outsourcing (BPO) through Progeon
Consulting
Finacle, a banking software product, is the universal banking solution from Infosys. As of November 2005, it has been deployed in various banking institutions in 47 countries around the world.

Products

List of Infosys products

Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award
Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award is a technology award started by The Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and Infosys in 2002. This award recognizes enterprises and individuals who have transformed their businesses and the society leveraging information technology. Some of the past winners have been Samsung, Amazon.com, RBS and ING Direct.

Any company or individual can apply directly or nominate others. The winners are decided by an independent jury comprising some of the best known thought leaders in IT.

WIBTA is one of the only global business awards combining the education and research strengths of a world class academic institution with the business acumen of a world leader in information technology services.

InStep

InStep is Infosys' internship program offered to university students who are from many parts of the world. The bulk of the interns work in the main campus at Electronics City, Bangalore, though a few are available globally. The interns are offered a stipend, free airfare, accommodation, food, and city transportation. Although they officially mention deadlines for applications, they recruit all year round. Each intern is usually assigned to one mentor. They are able to work in many areas of the company including Corporate Planning with top management. The premise of the internship is to promote the corporate brand globally while interns gain business or technical work experience.

Infosys Foundation

In 1996, Infosys created the Infosys Foundation in the state of Karnataka, operating in the areas of health care, social rehabilitation and rural upliftment, education, arts and culture. Since then, this foundation has spread to the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Punjab.

Infosys Acquisitions
In 2003 - 04 Infosys has acquired 100% equity of Expert Information Services Pty Limited, Australia (Expert).

External links

Infosys official website
Infosys Consulting
Progeon official website
Finacle - Universal Banking Solution product from Infosys

Source:- Wikipedia

Berkshire Hathaway

2006-02-06T17:51:00.000-09:00

Type Public NYSE: BRKa

Founded 1965 (since current management took over)

Location Omaha, Nebraska

Key people
Warren Buffett, CEO & Chairman;
Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman

Industry Property and casualty insurance, Diversified investments

Products Conglomerate focused on insurance

Revenue $81.663 billion USD (2005)

Net Income $8.528 billion USD (2005)

Employees 180,000, essentially all with subsidiaries

Website Berkshirehathaway

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRKa, NYSE: BRKb) is a company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, that oversees and manages a number of subsidiary companies. The Company's business activities include underwriting of property and casualty insurance, candy production and sales at retail, newspaper publishing, retailing of home furnishings, sales of encyclopedias, sales of home cleaning units, manufacture and distribution of uniforms, retail jewelry, and manufacture, import and distribution of footwear.

The Company averaged a phenomenal 25%+ annual return to its shareholders for the last 25 years while employing large amounts of capital. Berkshire has identified utility as the next big area it will invest in. In 2005, Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 was repealed; this allowed utility investors such as Berkshire to have more control over their investments

Berkshire Facts

The Intrinsivaluator site, calculates four valuation metrics for Berkshire, giving estimates from a liquidation value of $83,162 per A share ($2,772 per B share) to an optimistic intrinsic value of $160,800 per A share ($5,360 per B share). All figures as of March 5, 2006.

Berkshire's CEO, Warren Buffett, is respected for his investment prowess and his deep understanding of a wide spectrum of businesses. His annual chairman letters are read and quoted widely. A source of his quotes can be found at Wikiquote - Warren Buffett

As of 2005, Buffett owns 38% of Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire's Vice-Chairman Charlie Munger also holds a stake big enough for him to be considered a billionaire in his own right.

Berkshire Hathaway is notable in that it never allows its shares to split. Each share is thus worth tens of thousands of dollars. However, Berkshire Hathaway has created a Class B stock, with a price set to 1/30 of that of the original shares (now Class A) but 1/200 of the per-share voting rights. Holders of Class A stock are allowed to convert their stock to Class B, though not vice versa.

Buffett was reluctant to create the Class B shares, but did so to thwart the creation of unit trusts that would have marketed themselves as Berkshire look-alikes. As Buffett said in his 1995 shareholder letter:

"The unit trusts that have recently surfaced fly in the face of these goals. They would be sold by brokers working for big commissions, would impose other burdensome costs on their shareholders, and would be marketed en masse to unsophisticated buyers, apt to be seduced by our past record and beguiled by the publicity Berkshire and I have received in recent years. The sure outcome: a multitude of investors destined to be disappointed."

Corporate governance

Current members of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway are: Howard Graham Buffett, Warren Buffett, Malcolm Chace, Bill Gates, David Gottesman, Charlotte Guyman, Donald Keough, Charlie Munger, Thomas S. Murphy, Ronald Olson, and Walter Scott Jr

Financials

Cash and cash equivalents at September 30, 2005: $41.1 billion USD
Equity investments at September 30, 2005: $45.3 billion USD
Total shareholders’ equity at September 30, 2005: $89.5 billion USD
Revenue for 2004: $74.4 billion USD
Net earnings for 2004: $7.3 billion USD
Income taxes paid in 2004: $3.6 billion USD

Holdings

List of assets owned by Berkshire Hathaway

Insurance and finance subsidiaries

Geico
General Re
Kansas Bankers Surety Company
National Indemnity Company
Wesco Financial Corporation

Berkshire Hathaway Businesses

Insurance and Reinsurance Businesses
Insurance and reinsurance business activities are conducted through more than 50 domestic and foreign-based insurance companies. Berkshire’s insurance businesses provide insurance and reinsurance of property and casualty risks primarily in the United States. In addition, as a result of the General Re acquisition in December 1998, Berkshire’s insurance businesses also include life, accident and health reinsurers, as well as internationally-based property and casualty reinsurers.

Berkshire’s insurance companies maintain capital strength at exceptionally high levels. This strength differentiates Berkshire’s insurance companies from their competitors. Collectively, the aggregate statutory surplus of Berkshire’s U.S. based insurers was approximately $48 billion at December 31, 2004. All of Berkshire’s major insurance subsidiaries are rated AAA by Standard & Poor’s Corporation, the highest Financial Strength Rating assigned by Standard & Poor’s, and are rated A++ (superior) by A.M. Best with respect to their financial condition and operating performance. This Triple-A status is the result of Buffett's astuteness in the management of capital, people and busines.

GEICO — Berkshire acquired GEICO in January 1996. GEICO is headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland and its principal insurance subsidiaries include: Government Employees Insurance Company, GEICO General Insurance Company, GEICO Indemnity Company, and GEICO Casualty Company. Over the past five years, these companies have offered primarily private passenger automobile insurance to individuals in 49 states and the District of Columbia. The subsidiaries market their policies primarily through direct response methods, in which applications for insurance are submitted directly to the companies by telephone, through the mail, or via the Internet.

General Re — Berkshire acquired General Re in December 1998. General Re held a 91% ownership interest in Cologne Re as of December 31, 2004. General Re subsidiaries currently conduct global reinsurance business in approximately 72 cities and provide reinsurance coverage worldwide. General Re operates the following reinsurance businesses: North American property/casualty, international property/casualty, which principally consists of Cologne Re and the Faraday operations, and life/health reinsurance. General Re’s reinsurance operations are primarily based in Stamford, Connecticut and Cologne, Germany. General Re is one of the largest reinsurers in the world based on net premiums written and capital

Non-Insurance Businesses

Apparel

Berkshire’s apparel businesses include manufacturers and distributors of a variety of clothing and footwear. Businesses engaged in the manufacture and distribution of clothing include Fruit of the Loom, Garan and Fechheimer Brothers. Berkshire’s footwear businesses include H.H. Brown Shoe Group and Justin Brands.

Building Products

In August 2000, Berkshire entered the building products business with the acquisition of Acme Building Brands. Acme, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, manufactures and distributes clay bricks (Acme Brick), concrete block (Featherlite) and cut limestone (Texas Quarries).
Berkshire acquired Benjamin Moore & Co. in December of 2000. Benjamin Moore, headquartered in Montvale, New Jersey, is a leading formulator, manufacturer and retailer of a broad range of primarily architectural coatings, available principally in the United States and Canada.
Berkshire acquired Johns Manville in February of 2001. JM has been serving the building products industry for nearly 150 years and is a leading manufacturer of fiber glass wool insulation products for walls, attics and floors in homes and commercial buildings, as well as pipe, duct and equipment insulation products.
Berkshire acquired a 90% equity interest in MiTek Inc. in July 2001. MiTek is headquartered in Chesterfield, Missouri and is a leading provider of engineered connector products, engineering software and services, and manufacturing machinery to the truss fabrication segment of the building components industry.

Finance and Financial Products

On August 7, 2003, Berkshire acquired Clayton Homes, Inc. Clayton, headquartered near Knoxville, Tennessee, is a vertically integrated manufactured housing company. At year-end 2004, Clayton operated 32 manufacturing plants in 12 states. Clayton’s homes are marketed in 48 states through a network of 1,540 retailers, 391 of which are company-owned sales centers.
Berkshire acquired XTRA in September 2001. XTRA, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is a leading transportation equipment lessor. XTRA manages a diverse fleet of approximately 105,000 units, constituting a net investment of approximately $1 billion as of December 31, 2004. The fleet includes over-the-road and storage trailers, chassis, intermodal piggyback trailers and domestic containers.
CORT Business Services Corporation was acquired in 2000 by an 80.1% owned subsidiary of Berkshire and is the leading national provider of rental furniture, accessories and related services in the “rent-to-rent” segment of the furniture rental industry.
Flight Services

In 1996, Berkshire acquired FlightSafety International Inc. FSI’s corporate headquarters is located at LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, New York. FSI engages primarily in the business of providing high technology training to operators of aircraft and ships. FlightSafety is the world's leading provider of professional aviation training services.
Berkshire acquired NetJets Inc. in 1998. NJ is the world’s leading provider of fractional ownership programs for general aviation aircraft. In 1986, NJ created the fractional ownership of aircraft concept and introduced its NetJets® program in the United States with one aircraft type. In 2004, the NetJets® program operated 15 aircraft types. In late 1996, NJ expanded its fractional ownership programs to Europe via a joint venture arrangement which is now 100% owned by NJ. The fractional ownership of aircraft concept permits customers to acquire a specific percentage of a certain aircraft type and allows them to utilize the aircraft for a specified number of flight hours per annum.
Berkshire acquired McLane Company, Inc. in May 2003 from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. McLane provides wholesale distribution and logistics services in all 50 states and internationally in Brazil to customers that include discount retailers, convenience stores, quick service restaurants, drug stores and movie theatre complexes.
Retail Businesses

The home furnishings businesses are the Nebraska Furniture Mart, R.C. Willey Home Furnishings, Star Furniture Company, and Jordan’s Furniture, Inc.
Berkshire acquired Shaw Industries, Inc. in 2001. Shaw, headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, is the world’s second largest carpet manufacturer based on both revenue and volume of production. Shaw designs and manufactures over 3,000 styles of tufted and woven carpet and laminate flooring for residential and commercial use under about 30 brand and trade names and under certain private labels.
Other Non-Insurance Businesses

Scott Fetzer Companies — The Scott Fetzer Companies are a diversified group of 21 businesses that manufacture and distribute a wide variety of products for residential, industrial and institutional use. The two most significant of these businesses are Kirby home cleaning systems and Campbell Hausfeld products.
The Buffalo News publishes three editions on Saturday and Sunday and eight editions each weekday from its headquarters in Buffalo, New York.
See’s Candies produces boxed chocolates and other confectionery products with an emphasis on quality and distinctiveness in two large kitchens in California. See’s revenues are highly seasonal with approximately 50% of total annual revenues being earned in the months of November and December.
International Dairy Queen services a system of approximately 6,000 stores operating under the names Dairy Queen, Orange Julius and Karmelkorn that offer various dairy desserts, beverages, prepared foods, blended fruit drinks, popcorn and other snack foods.
In 2002, Berkshire acquired Albecca Inc. Albecca is headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, and primarily does business under the Larson-Juhl name. Albecca designs, manufactures and distributes a complete line of high quality, branded custom framing products, including wood and metal moulding, matboard, foamboard, glass, equipment and other framing supplies.
Berkshire acquired CTB International Corp. in 2002. CTB, headquartered in Milford, Indiana, is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of systems used in the grain industry and in the production of poultry, hogs, and eggs. Products are produced in the United States and Europe and are sold primarily through a global network of independent dealers and distributors, with peak sales occurring in the second and third quarters.
In 2002 Berkshire acquired The Pampered Chef, LTD, the largest direct seller of high quality kitchen tools in the United States. Products are researched, designed and tested by TPC, and manufactured by third party suppliers. From its Addison, Illinois headquarters, TPC utilizes a network of more than 65,000 independent sales representatives to sell its products through home-based party demonstrations, principally in the United States.
Berkshire currently holds securities possessing 9.9% of the voting interest and an 83.7% (80.5% on a fully-diluted basis) economic interest in MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company.

Common Stock Holdings

American Express Co. (12.1%)
American Standard Companies
Ameriprise Financial, Inc.
Anheuser-Busch Cos.
The Coca-Cola Company (8.3%)
Comcast
Comdisco
Costco Wholesale
Diageo PLC
First Data Corporation
Gannett
Gap Inc.
The Gillette Company (merging with Procter & Gamble) (9.5%)
The Home Depot
H&R Block Inc.
Iron Mountain
Lexmark International
Lowes Companies
M&T Bank
Moody’s Corporation (16.2%)
Mueller Industries
Nike
Outback Steakhouse
PetroChina
Pier 1 Imports
Procter & Gamble Co.
Sealed Air
ServiceMaster
Shaw Communications
SunTrust Banks
Tyco International
USG
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The Washington Post Company (18.1%)
Wells Fargo
Wesco Financial Corporation

External links

Berkshire Hathaway Official Website -
Source for annual reports, which include Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letters by Warren Buffett.

Yahoo! - Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Company Profile

Source:- wikipedia