Word: shakeout
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Business news is not very good these days. Though the U.S. is technically in its 28th straight month of growth, big airlines are struggling, the computer industry is in the midst of a protracted shakeout, and drugmakers are in turmoil. Last week even Procter & Gamble, the nation's leading household- and personal-products company, announced it will close 30 plants and eliminate 13,000 jobs in an effort to meet the prices of discount and private-label competitors. In times like these, they used to say that a sneeze by the American economy gave Detroit a bout...
...Bloomberg may be coming into a vulnerable period. The financial-data industry, which grew at the breathtaking rate of 20% a year during the bullish 1980s, has slowed down. Since the stock- market minicrash in October 1989, demand for computerized business data has grown a tame 5%. A subsequent shakeout has already claimed some weaker firms, such as Bunker Ramo, GTE Financial and Pont Systems, through mergers and failures. To remain viable, survivors must invest heavily in the next generation of information technology. That could spell trouble for small outfits like Bloomberg, says Margaret Fischer, head of electronic-information , practices...
When the recession arrived, it triggered the kind of layoffs that occur in any slump. But it has also accelerated a wave of firings that can only be attributed to longer-term structural changes, including a drastic shakeout in industries that were overbuilt in the 1970s and '80s. Among the worst hit is retailing, which is undergoing a painful adjustment to the frugal '90s. Just last week Zale, the largest U.S. jewelry-store operator, said it would close 400 of its 2,000 stores and lay off 2,500 workers. "We are looking at the historic restructuring of the American...
...apparel business, though, no trend lasts forever. "The bridge market has already got crowded," says Peter Brown, a vice president at Kurt Salmon Associates, a New York consulting firm. A shakeout is probably coming, and soon...
...industry's uncertainty is the question of what President Reagan's successor will do once he gets his hands on the Pentagon's purse strings. Many executives echo the fears of Grumman Chairman John Bierwirth, who says, "This industry is on the verge of a cyclical market shakeout...