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Author Topic: What's next for Ford and GM?  (Read 806 times)
where_is_god_now?
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« on: October 23, 2005, 10:04:31 am »

At least Ford had been making a profit, but for Q3 even they showed a pretty huge loss.  What's next for these companies?  Nothing is changing in the marketplace, so how can the stay afloat?
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mutex
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« Reply #1 on: October 23, 2005, 10:11:44 am »

Hard to say, but I do believe both are going to take some pretty drastic steps to get back to profitability.  For GM, they're cutting benefits to retirees pretty severely and that's probably just the beginning.  By my estimate, they have about another $4B per year to cut without losing any existing profit margin or revenue. 

Ford will probably approach this in their traditional way of laying off and closing plants or offices till they close the gap back to profitability.  The problem is that in this market that's probably a really bad thing to do, since they are trading off tomorrow's new and innovative products for today's profit and Toyota, Honda, Kia and Mitsubishi are already eating their lunch.

I suspect that both are going to go through chapter 11, though it's much less attractive now after the revised laws went into effect last month.  Both companies will emerge a lot smaller and will likely be really focused on a few particularly profitable car lines each.
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where_is_god_now?
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« Reply #2 on: October 23, 2005, 10:15:56 am »

So, what happens to all of the retirees whose benefits are cut?
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mutex
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« Reply #3 on: October 23, 2005, 10:27:23 am »

They have to stop using viagra and drop the premium package on their cable tv plans.  It sucks and it happened to my dad last year, so I really know how bad it hurts if you're in that position.
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