Reporters Notebook

April 18, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Like the swallows at Capistrano, or more precisely the dandelions on my lawn, the chorus of investors and analyst types calling for GE to spin off its venerable major appliance division has returned.

For years critics have demanded the head of GE majaps, that odd piece of the puzzle  — along with light bulbs and NBC TV — that doesn’t provide the roaring returns of the conglomerate’s jet engine, medical equipment or finance operations.

But now, following a disappointing quarter sparked by the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and peeved by poor earnings guidance, the chorus has returned, only louder and more bellicose.

Even former CEO Jack Welch has joined the fray, admonishing his successor Jeffrey Immelt in a rare public smackdown for failing to give Wall Street a heads up on the profit shortfall.

How quick t...Read More

November 26, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (2)

As if the media didn’t have enough to digest from Thanksgiving shopping mania, today they’re all over “Cyber Monday” like gravy on mashed potatoes.

With apologies to the National Retail Federation, the trade group that created the online shopping “holiday” as a way to promote e-tail sales, I must have missed the federal proclamation. And I still can’t find it on any calendars.

While I can’t say I blame Internet merchants for jumping on the bandwagon, I do take my fellow journalists to task for treating this fiction as a full-fledged cultural event akin to Black Friday. As Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew Fassler observed, “Black Friday jaunts are becoming like ...Read More

May 4, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

A BusinessWeek commentary by senior writer Peter Burrows proposes an elegant solution to the dilemmas besetting Dell and RadioShack: a merger.

Dell, which is losing share to a revitalized HP, has made no bones about its need for a fresh market strategy. And with the computer company’s market cap at $57 billion, give or take a few mill, its pockets are certainly deep enough to accommodate the iconic but withering CE chain.

Industry observers believe that RadioShack CEO Julian Day is merely tidying up the balance sheet in advance of a for-sale sign. With its core wireless business being siphoned off by the carriers, and no clear role for a parts-and-battery chain in the e-tail enabled 21st Century, perhaps that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

But would a Dell...Read More

April 19, 2007 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Jim Sinegal, CEO of Costco, is a 21^st Century Sam Walton of sorts.

His low-key style, his regular visits to every store, and his open defiance of Wall Street in paying his people the best wages in discount retail recall the humanity and rugged individualism that infused Wal-Mart before it lost its way.

No surprise then that Costco management maintains a series of pithy business aphorisms designed to instruct and inspire its staff. I learned of these adages not through dogged investigative work but in the pages of The Costco Connection, the company’s monthly publication for club members.

As editor David Fuller recounted, employees had compiled select maxims into a series of posters designed to satirize the down-home wisdom and workaday culture of Sinegal and his team. But as Fuller noted, the posters also honored Sinegal’s slogans fo...Read More