Word: slumping
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...billion in a celebrated 1988 battle with R.H. Macy & Co. But the takeovers left Campeau, who had little experience in U.S. retailing, sorely overextended. His attempt to raise cash by selling off several chain stores brought disappointing proceeds, and then the women's apparel trade went into a slump...
...industry more competitive by forcing bloated companies to slim down and shape up. Yet the towering debt loads piled up during the raider era -- by both the attackers and the managers seeking to repel them -- have made many companies less flexible and far more vulnerable to an economic slump. While the merger- / and-acquisition game will no doubt carry on in the 1990s, such deals are apt to be less grandiose and more carefully wrought than the quick-buck transactions that are currently coming to grief. Says J. Ira Harris, a Chicago-based senior partner of Lazard Freres: "These...
...prime reason for the slump is that corporate customers are cutting back on spending as they go through buyouts, mergers and restructurings. "Big customers are hanging back because they don't have any money," says Robert Noyce, chief executive of Sematech, a consortium of computer-chip makers. At the same time, the industry has graduated from an "original placement" business, in which many companies rushed to automate for the first time, to a "replacement" business, in which corporations buy computers only when they need new models...
Investors had expected the junk-bond market to soften during an economic downturn. But they have been taken aback that defaults are rising and junk- bond prices are plunging during a time of relatively stable growth. The implication is that any serious industrial slump could give the junk-bond market a full-fledged nervous breakdown...
Such pointers were culled from De Pree's 42-year business career, which included a painful slump in the mid-'80s when the company became too inwardly focused. His slim book grew out of a series of lectures that De Pree originally gave to adult-education classes. Like the elegant furniture his company makes, De Pree's book provides a valuable lesson in grace, style and the elements of success...