Present a paper that analyze the change in a major Research

Present a that analyze the change in a major organization(Ford,GM,Chrystler,Best Buy, Bank of America,ect.) base on the tr - Research Paper Example However, despite the wildly popular Model T, General Motors slowly but surely caught up with the Ford Motor Company by the early 1930s, and by mid 1930s it has graduated to become the world’s largest automobile company. It maintained its dominant position throughout the 1950s and 1960s. General Motor Company faced a series of dramatic changes in the economic environment in 1970s like the Oil Shock and the entry of Japanese competitors in the US market, and by 1980s it had entered the path of slow bleed. The industrial behemoth employed more than two hundred thousand employees and had manufacturing or marketing presence in more than 150 countries. It lost ground to its more nimble Japanese competitors steadily and the twin recessions of 2001 and 2009 triggered the near collapse of General Motors. The recession of 2009 was the final trigger and GM finally filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009. The urge to survive forced the GM management to take unpleasant but important decisi ons. Aided by strong government support, better economic conditions, a resolute management and an upswing in the market sentiments in the US as well as all over the world, GM was finally able to bounce back by 2010. This paper analyzes GM’s situation in 2000s - the external as well as internal challenges it faced and the changes it incorporated to survive, and subsequently, grow. General Motors in 2000s General Motors entered 2000s after a heady decade in 1990s. US automobile companies like General Motors and Ford Motor Company had experienced increased sales and record smashing profits. US customers loved and bought heavy cars and SUVs - vehicles that offered higher margins than smaller, compact and fuel efficient cars that the Japanese automobile companies manufactured. General Motors, by 2000, was a vertically integrated company with multiple brands and operations. These brands/operations operated independently, resulting in a lot of inefficiency. General Motors was also h eavily investing in technology. It was embracing Internet as a new medium of interfacing with consumers as well as vendors. It was also extensively investing on new communication technologies that would offer novel features to its customers (Nohria, Dyer, and Dalzell, 2002). Challenges faced The last decade of the century has been a tumultuous one, and has witnessed dramatic changes in economic scenarios. 1. Distance from the customer: The Gulf Wars had resulted in a never before seen situation – gas prices had shot through the roof and subsequently the cost of running the car had become more important than the cost of buying the car. While the nimble Japanese players had rightly understood that the environmentally conscious consumer wanted smaller, more efficient and easy to own cars, US automobile manufacturers, notably GM, continued investing in developing bigger and more powerful gas guzzlers. GM had clearly faulted on the most critical business basics – listening to the consumer. 2. Bureaucratic decision making process: The century old legacy, the very reason why GM had become such a superpower, was lost. Faced with the onslaught of Model T which offered no choices to consumers, General Motors fought back by offering its customers a wide range of cars to choose from. This was possible because the decision making process at General Motors was fast and quick. However, almost a century of world dominance had resulted in complacency in the company. This meant the management was slow

International financial market - and- corporate risk management Essay

International financial market - and- corporate risk management - Essay Example The above equation evaluates the return on a risky asset in terms of (a) its minimum compensation and (b) its potential risk compensation. Within the thinking on modern portfolio theory, the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) establishes the theoretical relationship between risk and return, where average expected investor return is determined by the average market return, as shown below: ÃŽ ² represents market sensitivity. An investor can, hence, estimate returns (r) by understanding ÃŽ ², the risk inherent in the stock, when only the stock’s history is considered. In a well diversified portfolio, though, the volatility of the individual stock has little influence on the portfolio’s overall performance. Empirical data gathered in investigations of CAPM, however, argues against the predictions of the model and this has largely invalidated many applications of the model. Portfolio Theory is focused on investors. Two fundamental choices have to be made: what proportion of risky assets should be included in the portfolio; and asset allocation, which depends on the conservative or aggressive requirements of the investor. The theory of diversification allows lower standard deviations and variances of returns within a portfolio. Additionally, the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) suggests that the prices of assets fully reflect available information: the implication is that the market cannot be consistently outperformed, since future share prices cannot be predicted based on historical data (weak-form efficiency); share prices adjust immediately to all available information (semi-strong-form efficiency); share prices reflect public and private information (strong-form efficiency). Diversification suggests two subsequent approaches to the management of the portfolio: active management requires the selection of stocks and the timing of the market, whereas passive management requires the purchase and long-term