Word: profiteered
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...everyone agreed. As Ricard buttered his toast, the markets battered his firm for paying $8.34 billion for Absolut's parent company, Vin & Sprit--which was almost 21 times the Swedish firm's gross operating profit last year. As if to suggest that Pernod Ricard had overreached, Bruce Carbonari, CEO of Fortune Brands (which was trumped in the Absolut auction), claimed that the price for V&S would not provide an "appropriate return" for shareholders. Yet le patron remained unperturbed. Three years ago, the company leveraged itself heavily to acquire Britain's Allied Domecq, a $13 billion deal that doubled Pernod...
Having brutally slashed costs, staff and service over the past decade, the big airlines still lose money. High fuel prices are a culprit, triggering American's $328 million first-quarter loss, but so is excess capacity, which keeps airlines from raising prices enough to earn a profit. The skimping has turned flying into an ordeal for most passengers. And new "open skies" agreements that have deregulated international travel give better-capitalized foreign airlines more access to travelers to and from the U.S. This accretion of failure has caused some in the industry to lose faith. "There really is no such...
...reduction in turnover, which saves some $40 million that would be needed to replace workers. A study by Towers Perrin of 40 multinationals over three years found that companies with high engagement scores had operating margins that were 5.75 percentage points greater than those of low-engagement companies; net profit margins were 3.44 percentage points more. "The organizations that have cracked the code understand we're not just doing this to be nice; we're doing this for business reasons," says Max Caldwell, a managing principal at Towers Perrin, who with managing director Julie Gebauer runs the firm's Workplace...
...strike against export taxes earlier this month. "This is the largest fire of this kind we've ever seen," said Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo in an emergency press conference at the Casa Rosada presidential palace. "It was started by farmers clearing land for cattle grazing driven by greed for profit with total disregard for human life." The President was just as harsh. "This is not a natural disaster, this is the result of certain aspects of human nature, irrationaity and irresponsibility...
...Without such measures, Albanel warned, France's art will continue to be snapped up by buyers abroad, while deep-pocketed French collectors will keep preferring to purchase the classic, often foreign-origin works they consider more valuable in terms of status and potential profit. "For every work that is imported, two works are exported," Albanel lamented...