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I'm sick of companies run by shareholders

J

JJ650

Golden Member
Well I don't rant much (if at all here) but this just pisses me off to no end.

I started working here (Commercial Metals Company - Joist and deck division) 3 yrs ago. When I first started here, they had just acquired a steel deck company (Bouras Steel) and also picked up a joist manufacturer. Things were great before hand at these 2 companies. Good benefits, business was good, people were not laid off and the management people knew what to do. The peons were happy.

Fast forward post mergers and the manangement is in shambles. Stupid decisions are constantly made. Joist people running the deck aspect of the business and vice-versa.

The parent company announced last week that is was stepping out of the joist & deck business and literally tossed a 20% market share to the wind. It wasn't in line with the companies "core" business (rebar/metal recycling) as they put it. In 3 years, they took a profitable company that had never laid anyone off in the past 40 years and knew how what to do, and completely sapped it of everything it had built up.

I got my walking orders yesterday along with all of the other sales people and engineering. Friday is our last day.

It was a sharholder decision of course and because of that, it was a gutless, knee jerk reaction to a slow construction economy.

In 1 day, they are letting go of 1200+ people.
They are ignoring the WARN Act completely and flipping the bird to anyone asking about anything.

Fuck you CMC.


CLiffs:
worked for a company for 3 yrs. after a merger.
Management destroyed. Replaced by monkies.
1200 people told to pound sand.
I need another job now.
Fuck you CMC.
 
All so lumbergs stock could go up a quarter of a percent...

But seriously.. that sucks. I'm sure you'll be back on your feet in no time though.
 
Yeah, it's amazing how bad management can ruin a company. My gf works for a fine software company that shall remain nameless. However, some of the business decisions they have made lately are just plain dumb. The whole finance an accounting dept is run by yes men and they were even bold enough to make a prediction that despite the economy, they would make record profits. Yeah, it is no mystery why half that dept on the finance side was laid off. It gets better though....they felt that need to hire a consultant to streamline there whole dept's process. What they need to do is automate half the things....it is simple stuff like distributing orders to process throughout the dept. What does the consultant do? He comes up with this asinine idea of letting people pick the work they want to do. Yeah, to no surprise, with in a week, all the orders were back ordered because no one wanted to do them. It comes to the guys yearly review, what do they do? They renew his contract for 2 years because he has "done an exceptional job". And do not even get me started on the need to invest 12 million dollars in Japan just because they have one small client there.

BTW, this is a company where all employees are stakeholders. I am f'n amazed they put up with this. And when they get small check from the quarterly stake holder, they complain that it is so small.
 
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Sounds like a great time to start your own business. If they left a 20% hole in a good market, is it really good?, then now is the time to see if you can buy their old assets for really cheap and maybe start a co-op with others laid off.
 
KMc said:
Rumor has is that your former employer may be positioning itself to be acquired....
Click to expand...

Yes we heard that too. I'm thinking it's Nucor (NYSE: NUE). They don't have any sort of rebar facilities and they want a chunk of the stimulus money going to road and infrastructure work. That sort of stuff is full of rebar. If they bought the ENTIRE company, our deck and joist business would put them in an antitrust position and they are careful to avoid that.
HA! Obama's stimulus plans just put me out of a job.
 
Gibson486 said:
Yeah, it's amazing how bad management can ruin a company. My gf works for a fine software company that shall remain nameless. However, some of the business decisions they have made lately are just plain dumb. The whole finance an accounting dept is run by yes men and they were even bold enough to make a prediction that despite the economy, they would make record profits. Yeah, it is no mystery why half that dept on the finance side was laid off. It gets better though....they felt that need to hire a consultant to streamline there whole dept's process. What they need to do is automate half the things....it is simple stuff like distributing orders to process throughout the dept. What does the consultant do? He comes up with this asinine idea of letting people pick the work they want to do. Yeah, to no surprise, with in a week, all the orders were back ordered because no one wanted to do them. It comes to the guys yearly review, what do they do? They renew his contract for 2 years because he has "done an exceptional job". And do not even get me started on the need to invest 12 million dollars in Japan just because they have one small client there.

BTW, this is a company where all employees are stakeholders. I am f'n amazed they put up with this. And when they get small check from the quarterly stake holder, they complain that it is so small.
Click to expand...

http://despair.com/consulting.html
 
Marlin1975 said:
Sounds like a great time to start your own business. If they left a 20% hole in a good market, is it really good?, then now is the time to see if you can buy their old assets for really cheap and maybe start a co-op with others laid off.
Click to expand...

Construction as whole is still in a slide. Construction seems to be the last ones in and out of troubled times.
There IS business to do, but it will be a little bit of a rough ride. The company is open to all offers on individual plants or the entire business operations. This facility would most likely go for about $6 million, give or take. The people here already know what to do and all of our products are Factory Mutual, Underwrites Labratoy and Steel Deck Institute spec'd and approved.
The issue is raising capital and competeing as a small time fish against a monster like Nucor/Vulcraft, or Wheeling.
It can be done. Just need the cash.
 
<sarcasm>Yeah I loved working for a public company.</sarcasm> Although I did like the money.


This so reminds me of my last company:
The company announced "that it was stepping out of the <insert business here> .... It wasn't in line with the companies "core" business (<insert business here>) as they put it".

The company I worked for and many others like it buy businesses like crazy when times are good. This raises their stock price and the executives salaries. Then during bad times they sell the newly acquired business claiming they are focusing on their core business and guess what - the stock price goes up and the executives get raises. Its brilliant!
 
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I just think that shareholder profit driven business model will cease to work in the long run. Not only is a company expected to grow year by year, they have to grow by a bigger margin than the previous year. This exponential rate of growth cannot be sustained in the long term, IMO. The only people who benefit from this are the company execs and the fat cats in wall street, who are vastly outnumbered by the residents of main street. I just hope the revolution comes in my lifetime.
 
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I always enjoyed little pep talks from the CEOs about how "shareholder value" should always be your primary concern when doing your job. I wonder if those guys were thinking of "shareholder value" when they gave themselves and their buddies big bonuses and huge raises.....
 
It's not the shareholders fault.
Its the system.
The CEO is basically tasked with making the maximum amount of money, in the shortest time, so he can get the biggest bonus.
Five years down the road doesn't count.
 
techs said:
It's not the shareholders fault.
Its the system.
The CEO is basically tasked with making the maximum amount of money, in the shortest time, so he can get the biggest bonus.
Five years down the road doesn't count.
Click to expand...

This type of decision isn't made by the CEO. It is made by the shareholder and board of directors.
 
techs said:
It's not the shareholders fault.
Its the system.
The CEO is basically tasked with making the maximum amount of money, in the shortest time, so he can get the biggest bonus.
Five years down the road doesn't count.
Click to expand...

^^ This sums it up. It's all about short term profit, not long term.
 
WizKid408 said:
This type of decision isn't made by the CEO. It is made by the shareholder and board of directors.
Click to expand...


No its usually the CEO. The CEO for a lot of companys is also on the board and/or heads it up. Even if they don;t the CEO just goes to them and says do this and I can make it work and make you money.
 
Shareholders' power is limited to electing the Board of Directors and voting on certain types of mergers. The management is trying to pass off responsibility for their bad decisions upon the shareholders (ie, the shareholders will replace us unless we dump this loser division-which division was turned into a loser by our prior decisions, but lets not go into that, wink wink). Management is acting to preserve IT'S jobs, pure and simple.

If your ex-employer was not publically traded, and had a large shareholder that actively went to the B/D and said dump this losing division or your heads will roll then you could blame it on the shareholders. In publically traded companies though shareholders (even large ones) tend to stay out of the fights and just sell off the stock if it isn't performing.
 
Thump553 said:
Shareholders' power is limited to electing the Board of Directors and voting on certain types of mergers. The management is trying to pass off responsibility for their bad decisions upon the shareholders (ie, the shareholders will replace us unless we dump this loser division-which division was turned into a loser by our prior decisions, but lets not go into that, wink wink). Management is acting to preserve IT'S jobs, pure and simple.

If your ex-employer was not publically traded, and had a large shareholder that actively went to the B/D and said dump this losing division or your heads will roll then you could blame it on the shareholders. In publically traded companies though shareholders (even large ones) tend to stay out of the fights and just sell off the stock if it isn't performing.
Click to expand...

I know what you are saying.

There was an internal letter put out by the powers that be, that I cannot post here due to legal issues, that spelled it out exactly who/what/why.
 
It's not whether the corporation is run by shareholders, board or, CEO, it's the fact that it's a Corporation. The sole purpose of a corporation is to avoid responsibility. Most folks think of corporations in terms of limiting financial responsibility but, moral, ethical and community responsibilities are also avoided.
 
MagnusTheBrewer said:
It's not whether the corporation is run by shareholders, board or, CEO, it's the fact that it's a Corporation. The sole purpose of a corporation is to avoid responsibility. Most folks think of corporations in terms of limiting financial responsibility but, moral, ethical and community responsibilities are also avoided.
Click to expand...

This. All of the time.
 
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