A. Nothing apart from a few years.
- Both companies were/are long established businesses, at the top of their game.
- Both were managed by whizz-kid fly-boy management just before their collapses. See here for the Marconi fiasco and here for Barratts’.
- Both collapses were brought on by splurges of massive company expansion financed almost exclusively by debt at a time of overly optimistic stock market trading.
- Both fell rapidly in value, Marconi losing 99.5% of it’s value, Barratts so far has fallen by 91%.
The question is, why didn’t anyone at Barratts see this coming? The GEC-Marconi collapse wasn’t long ago. They are all supposed to be financial experts. People really are sheep.
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September 10, 2008 at 11:36 am
Barratt profits hit by downturn
Well there’s a surprise. I never saw that one coming!
Sorry. I forgot to issue a sarcasm alert before that.
However, in light of the information in this post, it’s a bit rich blaming all one’s failings on the “credit crunch”. The writing was on the wall ages before that kicked in.
It’s poor, if not casino-gambler-like management. That’s all.