Word: profitability
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...decade-long slump, is at last beginning to show signs of life. The renewed activity has sucked in U.S. and other foreign money for 33 of the past 35 weeks, driving up the Nikkei stock market average some 25% so far this year. The problem is that Japanese corporate profits are also heavily dependent on exports, which can rapidly become too expensive for foreign consumers as the yen appreciates. Indeed, big exporters like Mitsubishi and Bridgestone have begun to complain publicly that Japan's currency is too strong. Sony recently blamed a profit slump on the yen as well...
Nice guy, huh? Nah. Killing the competition with kindness is more like it. For Bezos has long realized what Wall Street seems to have just awakened to: you can't stick around on the profit margins of a bookstore, or even a book-CD-video-toys-electronic store with the odd auction thrown in (which last year had sales of $1 billion and zero earnings as usual). To stay ahead of the curve, Amazon needs to build the ultimate e-commerce portal: the holy grail; the must-have home page for all online shoppers. And for that you need...
They allege that the University has sacrificed security to profit, holding out on a new contract while hiring cheaper, outsourced guards. Since the contract was ratified in July, the union has filed several complaints against the University...
...citizenship is based on the belief that companies owe stakeholders--customers, employees, activist groups, the public--an annual warts-and-all airing of their environmental and societal records, just like the flow of financial data they must provide to shareholders. But since environmental or ethical misdeeds can lead to profit-hammering headlines, the extra information can be of use to investors...
...conversion toiling for years before they start earning new benefits. (The company denies the charges.) A similar case is set to go to trial next spring against Onan Corp., a subsidiary of Cummins Engine Co. Says William Carr, an attorney representing workers in the case: "These plans are a profit center." Only now, considering the outcry, companies like IBM will start to wonder whether the costs outweigh the benefits...