Word: rite
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Stravinsky premieres his ballet The Rite of Spring in Paris, setting the audience into a riotous frenzy with his rhythms--violent syncopation, sudden changes of meter, "barbaric" repetitions--subverting everyone's expectations for a predictable and reassuring beat. We are but a moment from Wozzeck (1925) and on the way to banishing tonality itself from opera...
...Robert G. Miller's job to rebuild it. Named Rite Aid chairman and CEO last week, Miller, 55, comes from the No. 2 job at Kroger, the nation's grocery powerhouse. To heal the drugstore giant, he'll have to regain confidence on Main Street and Wall Street: Rite Aid has been the biggest loser in the S&P 500 this year, with an 80% drop in its shares since January...
Miller, who transformed regional grocer Fred Meyer into a supermarket behemoth before it was sold to Kroger earlier this year, knows fixing Rite Aid will be an uphill battle, so he's bringing three top lieutenants to help him. "Bob really cares about the customer, and that wasn't always an attitude that pervaded Rite Aid," says Meredith Adler, analyst at Lehman Bros. "He's a talented manager and a real straight shooter...
Still, Miller inherits a case study in the perils of trying too hard to please today's growth-hungry stock market. As the drugstore industry has consolidated into a few dominant national chains, Martin Grass (son of Rite Aid founder Alex Grass) nearly doubled the number of outlets, buying independents and refashioning smaller locations into 10,000-sq.-ft. convenience stores. That kind of real estate doesn't come cheap. In 1996, Grass shelled out $1.4 billion for a thousand Thrifty PayLess drugstores on the West Coast. Then a year ago, he spent $1.5 billion on PCS Health Systems...
Though he'll continue to modernize older stores, Miller says he'll significantly slow the frenetic pace of expansion and cut back the company's costly advertising blitz. Rite Aid has rescheduled $2.7 billion of its debt, and before long, it should announce a deal to sell PCS. As for the underperforming, oversize stores on the West Coast, Miller insists he will rejuvenate, not unload them. Wall Street announced a measure of approval: Rite Aid stock closed at $11.50, up about $3 for the week. And with baby boomers and senior citizens fueling a boom in prescription drugs, Miller...