Ford Motor Co. for decades has demonstrated a hearty appetite for litigation risk, which explains the more than 50 safety recalls the company has issued this year. Investors would be wise to take note of two significant legal defeats that recently resulted when two of America’s top litigation lawyers chose to take Ford on.
If electric vehicles are the future of automotive, General Motors CEO Mary Barra continues to suffer major missteps, admitting this week that her ambitious EV sales promises will be delayed another year. As well, Barra has issued yet another recall for her monster Hummer pickup, this one for a faulty battery seal allowing water to seep in.
One upon a time, Barron’s would be the publication sounding the alarm and warning investors about Barra’s track record of broken promises and GM’s history of shoddy manufacturing. Now it’s just another voice in the legacy media’s EV choir.
Adidas appears to have made a calculated marketing gamble that maintaining ties to a rabid antisemite is good for its business. I fear the company will be proven correct.
I’ve long opposed ESG, or so-called socially responsible investing, because it legitimizes the activities of some companies that do very bad things. So when I retrieved the November issue of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance this past weekend and found the publication touting ESG on its cover, my instinct was to toss it in the garbage and cancel my subscription. Reading editor Mark Solheim’s justification for the cover story decision didn’t change my views on ESG, but he made me feel good about subscribing to Kiplinger’s.
Solheim is the rare journalist who knows how to win friends and influence people. His column is a masterful example of engagement. Corporate governance commentator Nell Minow and Toronto Globe and Mail reporter Rita Trichur would be wise to read it.
The launch of Michigan’s Corewell Health last week and its tag line, “Together, we are now” marked a new low in American advertising and marketing. The earth rumblings you possibly felt was David Ogilvy rolling in his grave.
Bloomberg today published an expose on self-driving vehicles that confirmed my worst fears and doubts about executives who champion the technology and Wall Street money managers duped by the hype.
My thoughts on GM’s illegal payment demands of U.S. military personnel, the $102.6 million a California jury has awarded the company to pay for allegedly selling faulty engines, and why newly hired “chief people officer” Arden Hoffman strikes me as someone who can inspire beleaguered employees to return to the office.
When Elon Musk says jump, Tesla and SpaceX employees ask, “How high?”
When GM CEO Mary Barra says jump, she promptly apologizes to GM employees for making such an onerous request.
Here’s why it takes a giant leap of faith to believe Barra’s claim that by mid-century she will sell more electric vehicles than Tesla.
The New York Times’ latest McKinsey expose serves as a reminder that lack of business ethics and morals once sparked outrage in America, but sadly that’s no longer the case. Therein is McKinsey’s true genius.
A recent New York Times expose on the Providence “nonprofit” hospital system served as yet another reminder that McKinsey consultants might not be the business geniuses they are cracked up to be, particularly in healthcare and media.