Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Big Time Corporation Blunders?

By far, the biggest blunders committed by corporations are stock buyback programs. Happens all the time and at best, it is payroll expense for bloated share float from stock awards. Mostly, it is just burning money.

And the winner is.....!!!!!!

Dang I'm old! Long time ago, Coors Beer took and anti-gun stance. Every state that sold Coors erupted with Coors boycotts. They quickly reversed their position.


DMc

New Coke . . . A Blunder

Let's see they were able to switch "old coke" to high fructose corn syrup from more expensive sugar and bring it back to the public's demands for the old good stuff.

The brand name was mentioned about every ten minutes somewhere and they did not have to pay a cent for advertising.

Laser disc.

Billy Beer.

K-Mart hiring Rosie O as spokesperson.

VW and thier clean diesels that we’re only clean when hooked up to the test stand. Buybacks and fines will be in the tens of billions

J.C. Pennies hiring Ellen The Degenerate for publicity.

VW and the emissions fakery.

Along about 1965, Chase Mortgage was one of the early adopters of IBM's new Winchester technology-- the codename for what we know as a hard drive. The converted all their tape-based operations to this new hardware-- 20MB drives that were the size of a washing machine.

After about 6 months of smooth sailing, the hard drive crashed.

The next morning, there was a shriek from the boardroom: "What do you mean there's no backup????" It turns out they'd decided the data processing guys had decided you didn't need to backup up their new Winchesters. Recovery plans were discussed. The boardroom lizards finally decided to take out a full page ad in the WSJ something like:

"If you have a mortgage with Chase Mortgage, we're sorry. We've lost all your account information. Please copy and send all your mortage information to us with your next payment."

They didn't get one response. In short order Chase Mortgage ceased to exist. If the lizards had just shut up and stayed quiet, probably 98% of the customers would have sent in their checks the next month and no one would have been the wiser.

Harley Davidson. Bought MV Agusta for 109 million from the Castiglioni brothers, poured millions into the company, paid off their debts, and invested in production infrastructure. Panicked during the 2008 downturn and sold the company back to the Castiglionis for one euro after two years of ownership. Combined with their mismanagement of Buell, this cost HD well over $250 million. Harley has been a "lifestyle" company for so long they don't seem to understand how to compete as a motorcycle company.

John Law and his "Mississippi Bubble". Is a pretty famous one!!

http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/70/john-law-and-the-mississippi-bubble-1718-1720

GE. Judging from their performance under the recently-retired Immelt, they would have been about the same if they'd hired a [bleep] and ordered him to wreck the company.

I disagree under some circumstances.

First, if a company has excess cash, can't see a profitable opportunity to invest in plant and equipment, and can't find a good company to buy with it, the excess cash may attract a hostile takeover.

Second, it makes the stock price increase (supply and demand). Yes, top management usually benefits from this. But so do the stockholders.

It is not a payroll expense.

Most everything about Enron.

At one point in history, Pepsi was on the ropes, and about to go under. They made an offer to Coke to buy them out. Coke said "piss off and die " (they did not see Pepsi as a real threat, and they were worried about some strawberry drink you likely never even heard of. Pepsi fought back from the brink more from the insult, than market forces. Who's laughing now?

As I understand concerning Alaska. Russia had a heck of a time managing the place. Consider the time a letter would take travelling from Moscow to Sitka (New Archangel). Also the Russians had experienced very good relations with the U.S. and probably thought it very likely the hated British right over the hill in Canada would steal Alaska anyway. So best to sell it to a friend than to allow an enemy to move any closer. Who knew then about the gold, the oil, and the coming enmity?

Union Carbide sold off all profitable product lines (Eveready, Prestone, and others) to fend off a hostile take over by Dupont.
The USPS was asked if it wanted control over emails. The then postmaster general said no it's a fad.

Alaska also gave the US control of the northern Pacific. I agree that Russia had a hard time managing it with Moscow a half a world away. They've always suffered because of the lack of year round seaports and travel through Siberia was terrible at best. It was something like 40 years after we bought AK before they completed the Trans-Siberia railroad. It was almost 6000 miles long and wasn't exactly a high speed route. Even when it reached the Pacific, it was still a long way to Alaska.