Weekend business

Weekend business this week is covered many topics including irrational exuberance, continuing about Saturn, Amazon.com’s expansion and the rising shareholder dissent.

Starting with Jack Healy and Floyd Norris, they are discussing on current market situation and global economic recession issue. Compared to recession happened before, this time seems to be much worse because it leads to many problems. In the future, the federal reserve should unwind the program and clean up the balance sheet in order to help rebounding the recession. However, the production and industrial output are predicted to be better. The US currency is still weak while the value of gold has been so strong. People invest more in trading gold and this makes the price of gold would be fluctuated.

Moving on to the second topic discussing with Gretchen Morgenson on rising shareholder dissent, the summary is the shareholder protest due to the disaster financial situation and SEC would like to change their voting regulation. This will allow the shareholder voice to be heard and have an effect. Important issues are compensation, opposite and related party transaction.
The next topic is about Saturn Car Company, discussed with Tim O’Brien and William Vlasic. It’s about GM’s taking over the Saturn Car Company and reorganization. The reason why GM collapsed is because they held too many brands, too many models and the difference of operation and ideas. Moreover, there is an internal conflict over the cash and resources. Saturn is unique because of its marketing campaign, its relationship with its customers and buyers and special treatment. But nowadays, it has to compete hardly since its competitors have a same strategy. Penske choose to acquire this brand because of its challenging.

The last topic is the amazon, the world largest and successful online bookstore. Now they expand more their business lines further than books. They have been growing and use their push strategy in order to satisfy and encourage their customers to buy more by offering free shipping and Amazon prime. That’s why there are an increasing number of online customers. Their competitors have to be working hard on finding solution that could compete with Amazon.