Word: firm
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...shift that Jiang must have had in mind was his firm push to get the P.L.A. out of business. For more than a decade, P.L.A. generals have been fighting to make money, not war. At one point, the military controlled nearly 20,000 companies employing more than 16 million people. Top P.L.A. brass, often ditching combat boots for tasseled loafers, were common sights at properties that included hotels, telecommunications services, pharmaceutical concerns and even airlines. Less public was the fact that some of the nation's vital naval and air bases had become smuggling hubs for everything from cigarettes...
...must forgive Bill Gates if he's feeling a bit paranoid this week. By a brutal coincidence, his firm faces the unenviable task of defending itself in four different courtrooms simultaneously. Tiny software companies in Utah and Connecticut are taking Microsoft to task for its strong-arm operating-system tactics. Over in California, larger rival Sun Microsystems wants to save its Java programming language from Microsoft "pollution." And oh, yeah, there's the small matter of the antitrust trial, resuming Tuesday in Washington, where Justice Department lawyers are set to wheel out their biggest gun yet, an executive from...
...taxpayers, "it would be unusual if [we] did not maintain a close business relationship with the government of Indonesia and its officials, including then President Suharto." Fair enough, but in April, Standard & Poor's lowered its rating on $3.3 billion worth of Freeport debt and preferred stock, citing the firm's ties to Suharto and the possibility it could face "retribution [and] reprisals...
...does not intervene, which seems plausible, popular resentment over the company's connections with Suharto might encourage the new government to re-evaluate even the revised contracts, or to further jack up royalty payments, just as copper prices seem to be turning up. That in turn could erode the firm's low-cost structure. Even worse, Jim-Bob Moffett's old friends in high places would no longer be there to help...
...years later, the site has registered some 17,000 names, including such flagrantly poached brand names as Rolex, Coke and Scientology. These aren't big numbers by Internet standards, but they aren't bad either--especially for a firm whose two employees spent about $3,000 to get things rolling and, because the entire operation is run automatically by computers, now have roughly zero overhead. "I collect the names and make sure the servers are running," says Lyons with a Cheshire-cat grin, "and spend the rest of the time fixing my boat...