I’m looking for a list of big firms that went under, i.e. either they went bankrupt or out of business in some sense. I’m interested especially in firms that succumbed to ordinary market forces so Texaco which went bankrupt due to a lawsuit doesn’t count and neither does Enron. Famous names that once dominated their field are ideal. Examples so far include:
KMart
Pan Am
Atari
Penn Central
Polaroid
Comments are open for your suggestions. Thanks in advance.
← Previous Comments
Enron had a creative business plan which simply failed (or was horribly executed). It has nothing to do with this list. If it ever had a “market leader” position, it was abandoned, not lost to “normal market forces.”
I don’t agree that it was particularly creative, except in its accounting. Still, it seems to me that a company that goes under due to poor management has failed due to “normal market forces.” Why is GM in trouble? Poor execution. Why isn’t KMart Walmart? Poor execution.
Lucent Technologies
the death of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC)/HP/Compaq either as a set or individually.
Harland & Wolf of Belfast, built the Titanic, employed over 30,000 during WW2 and is now officially an SME.
Commodore definitely went bankrupt in the 1990s. The name has been bought by someone else, and people were still making Amigas only a few years ago.
Penn Square Bank, an Oklahoma City bank, failed in July 1982.
What abou J.C. Penny? Is it still around
Cray, the supercomputer company, was eventually absorbed by SGI if I remember correctly.
AOL
Someone mentioned Arthur Andersen. Although its top executives made some foolish decisions in the 1990s (especially during the split with Andersen Consulting/Accenture), it did not fail due to “normal market forces”. Even with some heavy settlement fees, Andersen would have continued to operate if the Justice Department had not indicted the firm. Many of its clients, particularly state and local government bodies and utilities, were legally obligated to fire Andersen upon indictment, regardless of the outcome of the trial.
After expanding rapidly during the 1940s, Armour and Company faced declining sales after WWII and closed its famous Chicago slaughterhouses in 1959. It eventually sold its brand name, which is used today by ConAgra to market hot dogs, etc.
Amana, the appliance maker.
Since no one else seems to have a memory that stretches past this century, allow me:
The Dutch East India Company, the first multinational corporation ever, the first company ever to issue stocks, the richest company the world had ever seen at the time, with 40% dividend payments — dissolved due to bankruptcy in 1798. Market forces led, in part, to its downfall as smugglers evaded its monopoly and as Europeans developed a taste for coffee rather than tea. Political forces also played a role as they were the Enron of their day, with a very large private army and navy, and deeply involved in the administrative affairs of their region.
Someone mentioned airlines that failed after deregulation. Eastern Air Lines was an interesting case, because its business segments – though not all profitable – didn’t actually fail while it was an independent company.
Once Frank Lorenzo and Texas Air bought Eastern Air Lines in 1986, they had put together the largest airline in the free world (including their precious acquisitions of Continental Airlines and Fronteir Airlines). Lorenzo then quickly dismantled Eastern. Its valuable reservation system and its Newark hub were transferred to sister airline Continental. Eastern’s Eastern Shuttle was sold to Donald Trump. It’s South America route system was sold to American Airlines. When the remaining combined Eastern-Continental airline filed for bankruptcy in 1989, the judge split the company in two, and Eastern was independent once again.
Eastern Air Lines liquidated two years later in 1991. But it wasn’t the same company at all. So I’m not sure it’s fair to say that market leader Eastern sucumbed to market forces. It’s profitable parts were taken by Frank Lorenzo and either sold to other airlines or transferred to Continental. American Airlines made lots of money from the South American routes over the last two decades. Continental continues to profit from the Newark hub operations and Eastern’s former transatlantic routes.
Brown & Sharpe was a major player in the precision tools market since the Civil War period. They are now a small investment company having sold off all of their precision manufacturing.
Long Term Capital Management.
Up to the 50′s a large portion of the ships sailing the seven seas was built in Clydebank in Scotland, and the largest of Clydebank’s shipyards was John Brown.
Although Clydebank still exists (opposite to Glasgow on the Clyde), shipbuilding is gone
Bell and Howell
Someone seems to have bought the name to pomote miscellaneous crap on TV.
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed.