...rivals in the industry. The company will have more flexibility to control over the pricing strategies, thus might be able to increase profitability. In other words, the selling and marketing will be more efficient. - Future growth and expansion The acquisition will allow General Mills to double its size. The brand will be added more than before acquisition. The company can basically gain more shelf space in the supermarket or hypermarket in the US and international markets. Simply speaking, the expansion of the firm could be reflected by number of brands being added. - Diversification With the greater intensive competition in the food and beverages industry, GM needs to come up with whatever necessary to address the needs of the consumers that always keep changing. Acquisition will allow GM to grow...
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...gm caseHistory: “What’s good for GM is good for the country, now GM is bankrupt so it’s true that what’s bad for the GM is bad for the country”. General motors were founded by William Billy in 1908, has production units in 31 countries and business operations in 158 countries. The company deals in automobiles and has remained as a market leader for decades. After its 100 years now the company filed a petition for bankruptcy in 2009. The company financial reports were showing a decreasing trend since 2005. The case study has discussed the root causes, issues and their implication on the future of GM. Also suggestions are given and we will also add some more to it. Root causes: 1) The biggest mistake was that GM stopped the EV1 electric car program. Toyota came forward with that and took the lead in the form of hybrid car (Prius). 2) Another mistake was the selling control of general motors Acceptance Corporation which was the financial strength of GM. 3) GM Over reacted to the truck boom. They diverted money and time to production of SUV’s (sports utility vehicles) 4) According to some experts the initial mistake was not filing the bankruptcy sooner. 1) GM management was unable to access adverse economic environment. US economy was going through recession. 2) GM financial discipline was weak. The directors were unaware of financial regulations and Further GM was having very unregulated credit system. 3) Raw material prices were high. 4) GM was...
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...Case Study week 3 GM 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior March 18, 2012 When becoming a team there are several stages that the team must go through and must go through them in order. Forming is the first stage then storming, norming, performing, and then adojourning is the last stage. Christines group has already done the forming, storming stages. At this point I think they are in the norming and the performing stages. They are in the norming stage because this is where the members really start to come together as a unit. In this case they have never really completed this task to begin with. Mike seemed that he didn’t really take the team seriously from the beginning and was not really following what the team leader wanted for the team to make sure things were done. With that problem they really could not get past this stage. If Christine would have understood the stages more then she would have realized that she was going to have a problem when she was in the forming stage. In the forming stage the team members must ask themselves “What can this group offer me?” and “Can my needs be meet?” among other questions. They should be asking these questions when they were getting to know each other in this stage. If these needs were not going to be meet it should have been addressed here before moving forward with the stages. The primary problem that Christine has is that the project is due in a week and has not received Mike’s portion of his work. If they do not get...
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...A Brief History of General Motors (GM) General Motors Corporation is the predecessor of today’s General Motors Company. It was founded in the early 1900’s, a time when the infant auto industry teemed with thousands of companies, large and small (Author Unknown). Billy Durant, GM founder invested in Buick in 1903 after which he assembled the company that became GM. He incorporated GM in September 16, 1908. Durant included Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Pontiac into the family within a few years after the incorporation. His fast pace of acquisition wore out GM’s bankers and Durant stepped down in 1910 as the president of GM. Durant together with Louis Chevrolet, a racecar drive, created a new brand of cars to challenge the Ford Model T. By 1916, Durant had acquired a lot of GM stock that enabled him take control of the company once again. In 1920 during a sharp recession that forced GM to rethink its business, Durant stepped down once again. (Author Unknown) In the process of creating a new post-Durant company, GM also created the archetype for the modern corporation. Alfred Sloan set up policy committees and staffs to coordinate GM’s different divisions; a strategy that he called “decentralized operations and responsibilities with coordinated control.” It was under Sloan’s leadership that GM organized divisions to provide “a car for every purse and purpose,” it allowed the customers to start with a lower-priced Chevrolet and then move up to a Cadillac if they could afford...
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...making them unsuitable for insulating GM’s cash flows. The option on treasury notes would flatten the long-term yield curve, and the long-term yield rate was to remain high above the current level. Price at maturity would operate below the bull spread making this option also not suitable for GM’s interest rate exposure. If GM opted to do benchmark caps, selling a cap with an exercise price of 10% would meet GM’s objective about 65% of the time, however there is a huge risk of unlimited losses at interest rates above 10%. Still, this is not a bad option. Swaptions are another option that isn’t terrible for GM. This option protects GM pretty well because if interest rates are high gm would be paying higher floating rates, however they’d be offset by the premium received for selling the option. If interest rates were low, the swaption would not be exercised, and GM would again be paying the fixed rate obligation, but lowered costs of borrowing by the amount of the premium that was paid. However, t here would be unlimited losses if interest rates rise above 9.4% for a 2-by-5 option and 9.64% for a 3-by-5 swaption. The best recommendation for GM to stay consistent with their core principle for risk manage, which is to reduce the variability of GM’s cash flow and lower financial distress, would be to issue the $400 million note...
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...A CASE STUDY ON THE INDIAN SMALL CAR INDUSTRY Prof. Tapan Panda A Case Study on the Indian Small Car Industry A BRIEF OVERVIEW ON THE INDIAN SMALL CAR INDUSTRY If there is one big market that is forcing the global auto majors to think small, it is India. Until yesterday, all the world's auto-manufacturers expected to create success out of their midsize products. There were as many as five players in the mid car segment and just one--the Rs 7,956-crore Maruti Udyog Ltd (MUL)--in the small car segment. Suddenly Daewoo Motors India and Hyundai Motors India--are changing lanes midway, making the small car market as the pivot of their marketing strategy in India. Couple that with the fact that two domestic manufacturers--the Rs 10,074-crore Tata Engineering & Locomotive Co. (TELCO) and the Rs 223-crore Kinetic Engineering--are ready with similar indigenously-designed products to compete in this market The last two years has really been the period of war in the small car market The story Behind…. The auto majors read the market wrong. Since the small segment was dominated by MULwith a market share of 96 per cent and given that the Trans –national brands already had tried-and-tested mid-size models in Indian market, this segment was more attractive than the existing ones. This perceptual change was because of two reasons. • • The clutter in the large and midsize segment due to entry of many international players. The small segment grew faster than the mid-size one, driven...
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...Women face greater challenges at the workplace. Do you agree or disagree? Write an essay, giving reasons to support your viewpoint. A photograph recently caught my attention. It was a mother carrying her 18 month old daughter in one hand and a document in the other. What’s special about it? She is a member of the European Parliament, Licia Ronzulli, and this photograph was taken when she was addressing the parliament. This epitomizes modern motherhood, and takes multitasking to new dimensions. Just stringing together the two words “women” and “workplace” automatically conjures the third word in our mind- “Challenge”. But as work places are constantly evolving, what one perceives as a challenge is indeed changing. A few decades ago nurse , receptionist or secretary was all a working woman could aspire to be. Any woman who dreamed beyond was ridiculed and her integrity was questioned. Corporates viewed women as weaker and less committed than male counterparts. “Lady Candidates Need Not Apply”- was the common last line in job advertisements. Those 5 words in a ‘TELCO’ advertisement sparked Sudha Murthy to send the famous postcard to JRD Tata in 1974 saying “I am surprised how a company such as Telco is discriminating on the basis of gender”. When I first walked through TML factory, I wondered how Sudha would have felt 37 years before, knowing that hers were the first feminine footsteps there. Did she possibly know then that she had taken a giant leap for her kind in TELCO...
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...Motors acquire EDS in 1984? General Motors (GM) is a multinational, publically traded corporation that specializes in automotive production, distribution, sales and maintenance. The technological boom experienced within the manufacturing industry in the later part of the 20th century created an opportunity to implement various Information Technology Systems and services to monitor all internal activities within a given organization. With the slumming stock prices and increasing pressure from international competition, GM’s only option was to automate its ongoing operations in hopes of becoming more effective and efficient in delivering top-quality products to the end customers. There were two possible options to proceed with automation of various services within the organization - outsourcing IT services to an independent body, or branching out current operations in order to have an in-house service provider. Due to specific time constraints and obligation to its shareholders to improve the stock performance, corporate managers in GM have decided to look for a strong, medium-sized IT service provider which could accomplish the much needed transition. At the time, in mid-1980’s, EDS was considered to be a mid-level provider of IT services, with expertise and corporate culture matching the GM needs. This resulted in GM acquiring EDS in 1984 for $2.55 billion, ensuing in the subsequent modernization of operations and establishing GM as a market leader, once again making it competitive...
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...planning that is required for an organization change and to withhold the resistance associated with change. Forecasting change before disaster and getting equipped with the change intervention is half the battle the modern era companies face. The company that I will be discussing in this paper is General Motors (GM). GM has a global presence and was growing rapidly in sales and brand value until past decade. Due to recent economy melt down and global economic crisis, GM was left with no options other than to make critical changes to their business model and products for the corporation to survive. Auto industry is deeply rooted in the fabric of American culture, one out of ten Americans depends on the US auto industry for their livelihood. GM can’t go back to the old ways of making profit and survive the new wave of economic restrains; like environment factors and going green initiatives due to the recent oil spill incident. The urgency to go green and need to change GM’s energy dependencies required GM to change. This forced GM to restructure their mission and vision to better suit the demands of the twenty-first century environment. Fuel efficient, style and quality of GM...
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...automobile industry. First, automobile industry is connected with many other relative industries. In addition, it is a labor intensive industry which needs a lot of fixed cost and the capital for further investment. These characteristics also evoke many alliances between the relative firms in order to reduce the costs. Second, rivalry among existing firms has become very fierce in this industry since the economy started to decline. One of the wise ways to get through this crisis would be the alliance strategy. 2. In the first JV, did GM and Daewoo have the necessary relational capabilities to make the JV work? In the first Joint venture between GM and Daewoo, I would like to say they fail to develop their relational capabilities. At the beginning, it is true that they had the relational capabilities in order to make the JV work. GM was willing to give their superior technology to upgrade Daewoo’s quality of product, and Daewoo was willing to help GM enter the small car market in both North America and Asia. However, it did not worked very well due to the poor communication. When the problems such as labor strikes and the poor quality of LeMans occurred, their efforts to overcome these problems were poor and uncooperative to each other. Daewoo argued that the poor sales were not primarily due to quality problems, but due to GM’s poor marketing efforts that had not treated the LeMans as one of GM’s own models. Further, Daewoo was...
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...CASE – 1 INTERNATIONAL CASE: MCDONALDS’S – SERVING FAST FOOD AROUND THE WORLD Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald’s restaurant in1955. He offered a limited menu of high-quality, moderately-priced food served in spotless surroundings. McDonald’s QSC&V (quality, service, cleanliness, and value) was a hit. The chain expanded into every state in the nation. By 1983 it had more than 6,000 restaurants in the United States and by 1995 it had more than 18,000 restaurants in 89 countries, located in six continents. In 1995 alone, the company built 2,400 restaurants, and by 2001 it had more than 29,000 restaurants in 121 countries. In 1967, McDonald’s opened its first restaurant outside United States, in Canada. Since then, international growth has been accelerate. In 1995, the “Big Six” countries that provide about 80 per cent of the international operating income are: Canada, Japan, Germany, Australia, France, and England. Yet fast food has barely touched many cultures. The opportunities for expanding the market are great, as 99 per cent of the world population are not yet McDonald’s customers. For example, in China, with a population of 1.2 billion people, there were only 62 McDonald’s restaurants in 1995. McDonald’s vision is to be the major player in food services around the world. In Europe, McDonald’s maintains a small percentage of restaurant sales but commands a large share of the fast-food market. It took the company 14 years of planning before...
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...Case Study---Fiat and GM: the troubled alliance An overview As trend in big businesses, the nature of the business grows there is a need for expansion and mergers. Although some of the mergers are benefiting and dangerous, they are entered into to maximize profits. This case study looks at the merger between two auto manufacturers, Fiat and General Motors (GM) and the problems and prospects they had. In evaluating the general environment facing the alliance between Fiat and GM the opportunities were for cost saving and cross--sharing of automotive technologies. Fiat saw the alliance as a means to save its ailing auto division which had been experiencing losses since the 1990s. For GM, the alliance was necessity to keep pace with current trend of the auto industry where rapid mergers had been on the rise since the 1990s. With the declining trend in its European operations, GM saw the merger as a means to enhance its operations in Europe and Latin America. However, the threats was that Fiat looses began to increase, fiat sought recapitalization and GM refraining from participating in the recapitalization thereby reducing its stake in Fiat Auto from 20 percent to 10 percent. Using the porter Five Forces model to analyze the global Automobile industry one can conclude that it’s a very attractive industry. Giving the demand for Cars the world over the competitive nature of the industry, it’s an attractive industry. The two main competitors of Fiat and GM are...
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...Daewoo Cars: Changing the Rules about How to Compete I. Introduction Daewoo-the South Korean corporation- was highly successful launched in entering the UK car market. It was successfully selling 35,000 vehicles in less of two years. This corporation continuously invests for £ 700 million in setting up a car factory in Britain, which considered to the large scale investment in design, development, and marketing and sales. In preparing the car launched, they were promoting themselves as ‘the biggest car company you’ve never heard of’. Daewoo was the second Korea’s bigger car maker and the 33rd largest business group and also has an aggressive plan for expansion and globalization. The pre-launched was stated the Daewoo presence and the market strategy in controlling the distribution chain by dealing direct customers. Daewoo’s market position was based on an innovative packaging of benefits and services around the car, a totally new approach to distribution, and the customer’s purchasing experience, and an emphasis on customer service. For evidence, Daewoo achieved 0.9 percent share of UK new car market by selling 10,000 vehicles within six month. The competitiveness in UK market car was fiercely challenging. According to the market research by Daewoo, motorist found that traditional motor dealers were not making customers feel welcome. The researches also found that one third of buyers were women. This market opportunity was used by Daewoo in implementing the...
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...The GM manufacturing plant in Fredericksburg, VA had a long history of over-engineered and inefficient processes. More importantly, the plant had a long and predictable history of failing to meet its operating budget and, as a cost center for GM, demonstrated a significant lack of ability to influence revenue in order to meet its budget. The relatively small size of the plant and its position downstream from other GM manufacturing segments made it prone to “ripple effects” of strikes in other larger plants further up the production stream – most notably the plant in Dayton, OH. A March 1997 strike at the Dayton plant resulted in no customer orders for Fredericksburg. Since timely delivery of components was critical to the overall success of GM’s entire transmission manufacturing operations, the Fredericksburg plant, a strike at another plant like Dayton was a catch-22 for Fredericksburg. No customer orders meant untimely delivery of components to other plants in the production chain thusly rendering a negative effect on overall production and GM’s ability to meet demand. The rural, small town setting of the Fredericksburg plant gave rise to unique issues concerning its workforce. Many of the employees were related and a union leader might find himself working alongside Process Manager Mother-in-law. While there may be some morale benefits to family working together, there are also some sinister downsides. The case study indicates that employees were lax about properly documenting...
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...Global Expansion Strategies of Two Korean Carmakers- Case Analysis B6110: Supply Chain Optimization and Outsourcing January 27, 2012 Two Korean Carmakers- Strategic Situations Daewoo and Hyundai are two Korean carmakers who enjoy many structural similarities. Yet the two are direct competitors in the Korean automobile industry, where they are jostling for position, pushing for economies of scale, and hoping to sure up a competitive advantage. Both Daewoo and Hyundai look to international expansion as their recipe for success. Each has formulated a specific expansion strategy in the past based on its particular market situation. Both Daewoo and Hyundai now look to international global expansion for future success. Expansion & Supply Chain The direct competition with each other in the Korean car market had an enormous influence on each firm’s past globalization strategies. The Korean automobile industry has been dominated by Hyundai since the 1970’s. By 1993, Hyundai had established a 50% market share in the Korean market, whereas Daewoo only held 20% (Bowon, 2005, p. 148). In 1993, Hyundai also enjoyed 58% of the market share of automobile exports by Korean companies, whereas Daewoo’s exporting efforts had failed (Bowon, 2005, p. 148). Moving forward from 1993, Daewoo and Hyundai took into account their competitive position against each other when deciding how to conduct their global expansion strategy. “Daewoo focused on expeditiously achieving...
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