Word: aeg
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...AEG-Telefunken's sudden collapse jolts West Germany...
...AEG-Telefunken was the very symbol of the postwar West German Wirtschaftswunder. When the giant company began to rebuild in the late 1940s, it found that the destruction of battle and the loss of property in East Germany had wiped out more than 90% of its factories. But a combination of hard work and a buoyant economy helped AEG-Telefunken to restore itself and become the second largest electronics manufacturer in West Germany after Siemens. In 1981, it employed 120,000 workers worldwide and had sales of $6.6 billion...
Thus it was a jolt last week when AEG-Telefunken declared that it was insolvent and could not pay its bills. The unpaid debts amounted to $3.5 billion. In addition to being the largest corporate casualty in West Germany since 1945, the collapse of AEG-Telefunken symbolized the problems now facing the country that first gave birth to economic miracles. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung candidly observed in a front-page obituary for the company: "This marks the end of all illusions...
West German commentators last week were comparing the current economic troubles with the country's 1931 banking crisis, when the German stock market was forced to shut down. Some officials saw the failure of AEG-Telefunken as proof that West German companies, which had once been among the leaders in high technology, were now falling behind American and Japanese firms. Said Andreas von Bülow, Minister of Research and Technology: "At the moment we are clearly behind our rivals, and if the applications in industry of microelectronics are not considerably speeded up, our technological standing will soon...
...known as one of Europe's most fashionable ski resorts. Yet every year top executives trek off to Davos for the European Management Forum, perhaps the world's most high-powered business convention. Last week 450 Europeans, including Heinz Duerr, president of the West German electrical firm AEG-Telefunken, Corp.; Gordon Stevens, a director of Unilever Ltd.; and John Raisman, Deputy Chairman of Shell U.K., Ltd., gathered in Davos to listen to lectures, talk business and do some skiing...