General Motors has had a lot of competition from the Japanese car companies for the last twenty years. They have done a decent job at changing their vehicle lines to compete with them. A strong argument could be made that they should have done more, but I feel that they have done a pretty good job. No matter which side of that debate you are on, the simple fact of the matter is, that they have not done a good enough job of running the company as a whole, and now find themselves asking for money from the government to remain in business. About the only thing they have done right was keeping their vehicle lines competitive with the Japanese.
This unfortunate choice of Toyota’s incurred a huge cost among taxpayers, whose tax dollars would be utilized to provide $2.3 billion to replace the thousands of lost jobs. “What was the reason behind NUMMI’s closure?” one may ask. Certainly it was not due to slow-selling products, financial troubles, or a deteriorating factory, for Toyota’s Corolla was the second best-selling car in the United States in 2009, and Toyota is the wealthiest automaker in the world. Toyota’s argument was that NUMMI was no longer feasible without General Motors as a partner, but the 15% of production formerly produced by GM could easily be compensated by an increase in production from NUMMI. For a plant that exuded solidarity and had the potential to revolutionize the way cars are created in this country, the closure of NUMMI was more than a mere shock.
First of all, GM has shed nearly $40 billion in obligations to become debt-free. This gives GM a huge advantage competing with companies which did not bailout and is still paying off it borrowed to survive such as Ford. Second of all, GM is achieving a healthy margin. GM cut incentives and slim down. This movement causes a decline on sale but help company keep margin.
| HOW THE STOCK HAS FARED: Stock performance between the day before P&G announced acquisition of Gillette on Jan. 28, 2005 and market close on Feb. 11, 2010. | Five years later, though, things haven't exactly gone as planned. Most of the acquired Gillette businesses have been a drag on P&G's top line, not a boost. Most of Gillette's senior managers (with the notable exception of current P&G Vice Chairman Ed Shirley) have left. P&G's stock has lagged behind key competitors', including Colgate-Palmolive Co. and Unilever, which have beaten P&G 4 to 1 and 3 to 1, respectively, in the stock market.
Introduction The Volkswagen (VW) emission scandal is not an isolated case in recent history wherein a global company faced a gargantuan problem that is almost next to impossible to resolve. British Petroleum paid a whopping $20 billion settlement five years after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (Griffin, et. al., 2015) Unfortunately, the Volkswagen scandal did irreparable damage to Germany's brand compared with British Petroleum or any other “trade scandal” because the case of VW was deliberate deception of consumers which might even possibly be an industry-wide deception. Diesel cars now have a bad reputation because of the high levels of emissions that they produce and they are 10-15% more expensive to insure
Chrysler like other automobile manufacturers experienced a slump in car sales until the Obama Administration revived the American automobile industry. Today, Chrysler is bobbling in sales like never before. A firm’s success is dependent on the type of strategy it adopts and this is done through policies, procedures, and approaches to the business strategy. Target strategy is one of those strategies that businesses could implement in order to enhance their competitive edge. According to Blocher, Stout, Juras, and Cokins, target costing is the desired cost for a product to stay competitive while earning a desired profit (Blocher, Stout, Juras, Cokins, 2013).
The U.S Auto Industry: Factors to Consider in a Bailout With continued uncertainty in the economy, and U.S. businesses collapsing all around, another tough decision game recently for the federal Government: Do we, or do we not provide taxpayer dollars to bailout the failing American auto industry? With supporters both for and against an auto bailout, Congress had to make a decision based upon what was best for today’s tough economic times. Recently, two publications, The Nation, and The Pew Research Center, took a closer look at the potential bailout. They examined, very differently, a few of the many factors involved in an auto bailout, but ultimately left the decision up to the reader. I seems that the most heavily weighted subject of the auto bailouts is the concern about the enormous numbers of jobs that would be lost if a bailout is not approved.
If the company continues to loose billions of dollars year after year adjustments need to be made somewhere, so the concentration should be put in the plants that are successful and slow production in the lagging plants or just simply close down. Second I would choose to reduce the SUV and truck lines because of the high gas prices throughout the country simply because the smaller cars would be more gas efficient, more cost efficient, and a lot of money being lost through the lack of being able to sell the expensive SUV’s which also doubles in cost to fill up and drive on a daily basis. Most Americans are buying the smaller cars because of the recession or the public opinion that we are in a recession. Third, would be to go ahead and sell the premium automobile group to somebody that would be able to make use and profit off of the lack of sales year after year. Cars like Jaguar and especially Aston Martins which are one of the most expensive cars in the world, don’t really sell on a large scale in the US except for the wealthy percentage of the population, so selling the premium automobile group should be a good business decision especially since the PAG group doesn’t fit the way Ford intended their business to be operated.
Easy Car’s information system calculated expected demand and enabled the company to achieve a utilization rate above 90 percent; this figure was much higher than industry leader Avis Europe’s utilization rate of 68 percent. To further reduce costs the company enacted stiff penalties for returning the car late and for not cleaning the before returning it to the rental office. Some customers complained that the fees were not adequately disclosed and were therefore unfair. EasyCar’s
Unfortunately, investors around the world expected that the value of Volkswagen would decline given the state of the world economy in 2008, and these Investors had short sold 12.8% of Volkswagen shares. In their frenzy to cover their short positions in the wake of Porsche’s announcement, the price of Volkswagen shares increased dramatically. Porsche made over $6B in the ruse while hedge funds lost an estimated $35B. In the second