courtesy of General MotorsOne of the most extraordinary aspects of July U.S. car sales was the evenness of the advance among the largest firms. The exception to that was once-surging Kia and Hyundai, which…
courtesy Dell Inc.Michael Dell appears to have gotten what he wished for. The special committee of the Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) board, charged with vetting any arrangement to buy the company, has given the…
Brian Solis, via Wikimedia CommonsWhile most of the media coverage about Facebook Inc.’s (NASDAQ: FB) stock price has focused on whether it can reclaim the $38 IPO level, just as important is whether its…
courtesy of SamsungThe new Motorola Moto X, made by the division of Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), may be the best smartphone ever made — the best in the universe. But in the great sea of…
Wikimedia CommonsSome consumers make purchase decisions based on independent research. AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) needs to hope that is so. AT&T is the winner of the recently completed “J.D. Power 2013 U.S. Wireless Customer Care…
courtesy of Toyota Motor Corp.General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) and Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) each posted earnings above Wall Street expectations last week. The numbers were another sign the car industry, so badly…
ThinkstockShares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. (NYSE: MSO) have fallen 65% in five years, as the company has lost money each of those years. Most of that drop has been because the public…
Back in the late seventies, as an intern in the financial services industry, I was one of the few women in meetings with top management, economists, and strategists . . . and I was…
Courtesy Volkswagen AGIn the 1970s, the Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (NYSE: HTZ) commercials were all over television. Arnold Palmer and O.J. Simpson would slide into a new rental car and drive off, satisfied, into…
courtesy J.C. Penney Co. Inc.J.C. Penney (NYSE: JCP) denied plausible rumors that CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT) has cut off credit to small vendors of the retailer. The conjecture may be supported by a sharp drop in…
ThinkstockVery little in the Consumer Federation of America’s (CFA) “Nation’s Top Ten Consumer Complaints” was unexpected. The results of the survey show how hard it may be to operate in some of the businesses in which customers expect…
ThinkstockChina’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI) figure for July was weak, or modest, depending on the source, but certainly no cause for optimism about a sharp slowing of the world’s largest economy. After adjusting for…
courtesy of Sony Corp.Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) posted a profit, but the figure is not likely to satisfy raider Daniel Loeb, who wants the company to break out its studio operations. Sales and operating…
ThinkstockThe number of people employed in New York City, Dallas and Houston rose sharply in June, compared to a year ago, based on total number of people employed. Among all U.S. cities, these three…
courtesy of MicrosoftAccording to Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), its Surface tablet business lost money in the past fiscal year. One clue that the product was in trouble was the disclosure that Microsoft wrote down…
ThinkstockNEC has decided not to join HTC, BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ: BBRY), Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and smaller rivals in the uphill battle against Samsung and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL). It will leave the mobile…
Courtesy Boeing Co.Boeing Co.’s (NYSE: BA) 787 Dreamliner problems just got much, much worse. Safety questions about the Dreamliner have spread to several other Boeing models. The news will do more damage to its…
courtesy of Sony Corp.Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb continued his battle to increase Sony Corp.’s (NYSE: S) shareholder value as he pressed the Japanese company over management of its studio. The pressure has become…
Courtesy Chrysler Group LLCChrysler posted modest results. While the numbers showed some progress, they also indicate that the company is not a viable competitor to its much larger rivals. The company announced that its preliminary…
courtesy of Sprint Corp.Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) released earnings that were not only poor, but show that, despite some progress with subscriber additions, it is still bleeding on the bottom line. Softbank already may regret…