Word: sunbeams
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...came up demonstrably short at Sunbeam. The appliance maker lost $44.6 million in the first quarter, and may post another loss this quarter. Analysts who thought the company would earn $2 a share in 1999 put the figure today just north of $1. Sunbeam suffers from an inventory glut that will take months to assess and longer to fix. It appears Dunlap had been "stuffing the channel," persuading retailers through discounts to buy more gas grills than they would normally need. This practice helped swell Sunbeam earnings in 1997 but led to this year's crash. Even Dunlap's huge...
Dunlap's role as self-appointed messiah for shareholder value, meanwhile, is up for another casting call. Sunbeam shares were as high as $53 early this year and have fallen 79%--to $11.25, which is lower than the level at which the stock traded ($12.50) when Dunlap was hired. The collapse has crushed morale at Sunbeam, where workers who survived Dunlap's initial slashing and burning (he cut half the company's 12,000 jobs) were rewarded with a company-wide stock-option plan that for a painfully brief period was gratifying but now represents lost dreams. Said an employee...
...half a dozen times that he would go away quietly if the board were to buy him out of his contract. That was when the board lost confidence. "I was shocked," recalls board member Howard Kristol, a New York lawyer who represented Dunlap in his initial contract negotiation with Sunbeam. "We felt he had already left...
...phone but was unsuccessful. And I should note for the record that in the past I have written favorably of Dunlap, whose policy of fast and deep cost cutting at troubled companies, I believe, makes sense. Clearly, though, I was wrong about how far he could take Sunbeam...
...person for the job. He fixed cosmetics company Revlon in the early 1990s, and most recently was doing the same for outdoor-equipment company Coleman--both efforts on behalf of controlling shareholder Ronald Perelman. Levin's selection is no accident. On March 2, Perelman sold Coleman to Sunbeam in a stock swap, and he is now Sunbeam's second-largest investor, with a 13% stake. The largest is activist money manager Michael Price, who controls 17%. As a measure of how quickly Dunlap's career unraveled, Price only two weeks earlier had publicly, emphatically supported Dunlap. But he became...