4 ms·

"That profitable part of the business is what Daniel S. Loeb, an American investor and manager of the hedge fund Third Point, wants Sony to spin off to raise ca

"That profitable part of the business is what Daniel S. Loeb, an American investor and manager of the hedge fund Third Point, wants Sony to spin off to raise cash to resuscitate its electronics business." I find this quite interesting. We have a business that is supplying goods and paying it's employees. Let's chop it into one part that will survive and make me money and another part which will most likely die meaning all the employees are fired. I can understand the logic from one point of view but I'm not really sure the decision would benefit anyone other than a small number of investors (not all of them!) and ... I guess the lawyers and bankers always get their cut.

kalleboo 13y ago
> I find this quite interesting. We have a business that is supplying goods and paying it's employees. Let's chop it into one part that will survive and make me money and another part which will most likely die meaning all the employees are fired. This is the american corporate/MBA logic. Japanese business culture is to keep it around and try to develop it. It springs from the same reasoning where Japanese business hire their engineers right out of college and people have their job/position in one company for life.
Ma8ee 13y ago
On the other hand, keeping the bleeding part alive with money from another part of the company means that the prices in the electronics market will be artificially low, which makes it harder for all other makers of electronics. Maybe it's better that some electronics makers disappear from the market and let the remaining ones make a little bit more money, freeing some more resources for developing new innovative gadgets (or, admittedly, just making the owners wallets fatter), and maybe hire back some good engineers. tl;dr: Keeping operations that can't live by themselves alive with external funding distorts the market, whether it is the government or the corporations that do it.
ctdonath 13y ago
It's exactly what happened to General Electric: anything it wasn't #1 or #2 in its industry got cut. Now it's name is officially GE, and focuses on financial "products".

kalleboo 13y ago

> I find this quite interesting. We have a business that is supplying goods and paying it's employees. Let's chop it into one part that will survive and make me money and another part which will most likely die meaning all the employees are fired. This is the american corporate/MBA logic. Japanese business culture is to keep it around and try to develop it. It springs from the same reasoning where Japanese business hire their engineers right out of college and people have their job/position in one company for life.

Ma8ee 13y ago

On the other hand, keeping the bleeding part alive with money from another part of the company means that the prices in the electronics market will be artificially low, which makes it harder for all other makers of electronics. Maybe it's better that some electronics makers disappear from the market and let the remaining ones make a little bit more money, freeing some more resources for developing new innovative gadgets (or, admittedly, just making the owners wallets fatter), and maybe hire back some good engineers. tl;dr: Keeping operations that can't live by themselves alive with external funding distorts the market, whether it is the government or the corporations that do it.

ctdonath 13y ago

It's exactly what happened to General Electric: anything it wasn't #1 or #2 in its industry got cut. Now it's name is officially GE, and focuses on financial "products".