🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan25.092554.26383@cs.hw.ac.uk> neil@cs.hw.ac.uk (Neil Forsyth) writes:
>In article <C15nCD.F4@newcastle.ac.uk> Craig.Graham@newcastle.ac.uk
>(Craig Graham) writes:
>>I was most amused to hear on the Evening News (on the Radio), that IBM has just
>>made the biggest corporate loss EVER in the history of corporate losses......
>
>(With apologies to those who read this group for informative articles)
>
>A friend of mine was told these 'facts' at his employee induction course with
>a clone manufacturer.
>
>	"IBM has so many employees worldwide that if they were all in one
>	place and that place was called a country then it would be the fifth
>	largest country in the world."

Hmm... Last time I worked for IBM (August 1992), after the big job cuts then,
worldwide labor force was around 360 000... Before the cuts, it MAY have
been as high as 400 000 once upon a time... Now, if you take the world's
population as 5 000 000 000, then IBM is less than 1/12 500 of the world's 
population.. Now, Canada is nowhere near the top 10 in population, and we have
30 million people.. 
>
>	"IBM has so much money in the bank that the interest alone can pay
>	those peoples wages such that they could stop making computers
>	tomorrow and still keep everyone in a job if they had a mind to."
>
This, I do not doubt.. Sure IBM had a big loss, but keep in mind that they
wrote off 7.5 BILLION for pensions which other corporations will have to
do later (new US law which they don't HAVE to comply with until 1994, I think)
IBM figured that this year was probably a write-off anyway (due to the 
recession) and thus they might as well REALLY kill this year, and take it to
the competition next year (btw, this is just a GUESS as to why they did it now
 - I am no longer affiliated with IBM).

>I dunno how true these statements are but even if there is some truth in them
>then I doubt that the financial loss will hurt them much.
>
>+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
>! DISCLAIMER:Unless otherwise stated, the above comments are entirely my own !
>! Neil Forsyth                                                               !
>! Department of Computing and Electrical Engineering                         !
>! Heriot-Watt University                                                     !
>! Edinburgh, Scotland                                                        !
>! United Kingdom            Email: neil@uk.ac.hw.cs, ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!neil !
>! "'Have you got any?' he asked, expecting the answer no" - Monty Python     !
>+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+


Mattias
-- 
Mattias Hembruch
>> My views do not necessarily reflect those of the TSE. <<
E-mail: mattias@tse.asd.tse.ca