Word: techs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...celebrated the biggest and boldest acquisition in his company's history. Two years ago, Smith revealed that the world's largest automaker (1984 sales: $83.9 billion) was courting a mysterious "lulu" of a company, one that would help transform GM from something of a stodgy powerhouse into a high-tech star. Now the Detroit giant was driving off with its prize. After a contest in which it outbid Ford and Boeing, GM agreed to acquire Hughes Aircraft, a major defense contractor (1984 sales: $5.8 billion), for more than $5 billion in cash and stock. The landmark deal is the largest...
Barely pausing for breath, Smith has directed a far-reaching corporate reorganization and has been snapping up high-tech companies that make everything from industrial robots to computer software for artificial intelligence. Prior to last week's agreement, GM's boldest acquisition was the $2.55 billion 1984 purchase of Electronic Data Systems, the world's largest data-processing firm...
...going through the largest technological revolution in its history, and we're going to be standing right in the middle of it. Our game plan was to have E.D.S., Hughes and GM as the natural base for both growth and diversity. We are now being viewed as a high-tech company, not a medium-tech, mass- production...
While the Saturn project was being planned, Smith's high-tech talent scouts were continuing their hunt for acquisitions. Hughes Aircraft was an early favorite. Considered a rival to Bell Laboratories as an electronics developer, Hughes was precisely the type of company that Smith sought. "They are a storehouse of technology," he says. "Hughes' single biggest asset is its brainpower and teamwork." But Hughes coveted its independence and initially spurned GM. The rebuff turned the automaker toward Electronic Data Systems, a Dallas-based computer-services firm that Founder H. Ross Perot had built into the largest company in its field...
While high-tech executives are jubilant and oilmen sigh with relief, builders and real estate operators are aghast. The tax changes specifically targeted at their industry, such as the extension of the "at-risk" rule for shelters and new guidelines on what profits qualify for capital-gains treatment, are just the start of their troubles. Like other businesses, they will get less generous deductions for depreciation, and that is an especially important item for them, since their business consists so heavily of dealings in those highly depreciable properties, buildings. Adding up all the ways in which realty taxes will...