24/7 Wall St. has created a new list of brands that may disappear, which includes Readers Digest, Kia Motors, Dollar Thrifty (NYSE: DTG - News), Zale (NYSE: ZLC - News), Blockbuster (BLOKA.PK - News), T-Mobile, BP Plc (NYSE: BP - News), RadioShack (NYSE: RSH - News), Merrill Lynch and Moody's (NYSE: MCO - News).
Reader's Digest was once the most widely read magazine in the world. According to the company, it still may be when its overseas editions are taken into account. Last August, the company took its U.S. operations into Chapter 11 to decrease debt. It emerged from bankruptcy in February with $525 million in exit financing. The company cut the number of issues it publishes a year from 12 to 10 last year. It also cut its circulation guarantee for advertisers to 5.5 million copies from 8 million. It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago that a magazine as old and famous as Reader's Digest would be shuttered. However, Reader's Digest as it is known in the U.S. will be gone.
Merrill Lynch may have been acquired, but that will not keep it safe. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Banks and other large financial services firms have a habit of buying large retail brokerage houses and then changing their names. Shearson is gone. So is EF Hutton and Prudential. In most cases the parent company wants to put their own names on the door. That is very likely to happen to Merrill Lynch, which was at one point the largest full-service broker in the U.S. Merrill is now owned by Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC - News), and the buyout spawned a number of scandals that kept Merrill's name in the paper for weeks and did a great deal to harm its name with customers. Bank of America will follow a time honored tradition, and Merrill Lynch will become BofA Investment Management.
Kia Motors Corp. is one of the two car brands of Hyundai of South Korea. It has always been a marginal brand. Its stable mate, Hyundai USA, has a reputation for high quality cars like the Sonata and Genesis. Kia sells "low rent" cars and SUV nameplates like the Sorento and Rio. As GM and Ford (NYSE: F - News) have already discovered, it is expensive to maintain multiple brands and storied car names, including Pontiac, Saturn and Mercury, are disappearing. Most Kia cars sell for $14,000 to $25,000. Hyundai has several cars in the same price range. Hyundai's Sonata has quickly become one of the best-selling cars in America, and its Genesis flagship model competes with mid-sized BMWs and Mercedes. The parent company will take a page from several other global car companies and dump its weakest brand.
The first brand on that list was Newsweek. The publication was founded in 1933. Parent firm, The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO), has given up on the magazine, which it has owned since 1961. None of the buyout offers made thus far seem to be serious. Closing magazines was in vogue during the depths of the recession. Newsweek has little chance of staying open.
Walang komento:
Mag-post ng isang Komento