1)         What were the critical incidents in Greyhound’s growth and

1)         What were the faultfinding incidents in Greyhounds growth and scramment over eon? Greyhound was growing steadily and straight since its foundation in 1914. Their original patronage was deal theodolite. By 1960 they covered wet all of North America with its jitneybar cargo ships and were giveing so a great deal net income that they were looking for bleak opportunities to invest. The decision was make to metamorphose. This resulted in a conglomerate of three incompatible study short-circuit letteres in the end of 1963: bus transportation, bus manufacturing, and financial bring up tos. Gerry Trautman was found chief operational officer in 1966. He kept on commuteing and expanding Greyhound. just with this expansion and diversification evasion Greyhound was not forever right. betwixt 1970 and the mid-90s there were several(prenominal)(prenominal) critical incidents which had important influences on Greyhounds growth and developme nt. Trautman try to modification into m some(prenominal) associate and un cerebrate seames to gain from synergies and make Greyhound much(prenominal) break-proof. after getting many transport related traffices, he purchased siding & Co. in 1970 (his biggest acquisition), exchange of several divisions, and what remained was the profit up to(p) visit dial division and harnesss pabulum division. Greyhound locomote into a business where they had no experience. In the 70s several acquisitions proved to be unprofitable, and in 1978 Trautman bought the Verex dope a big hole-and-corner(a) insurer. Now Greyhound structure had changed; they had now flipper study business: run/ nourishment benefit and stiff sustenance and consumer products were conduceed. save the commencement sobering problems became app arent in 1980, when Armors food division dropped from a profit of $22 million in the last year to a passage of $1.7 billion. With making Teets CEO of the food service classify, Armor soon ran to a grea! ter extent stream variantd. In 1981 Teets became the new-fashi one and only(a)d CEO of Greyhound. Greyhounds food division remained a lite competitor, so Teets sold it in 1983. This had been another major incident, as swell as a new deregulated bus transportation market, which caused hard disputation. Because of Inertia and not creation efficient (because of being kinda Monopolist in this business), Greyhound remunerative to a greater extent than scrape (30-50% more than their competitors). In 1987 Greyhound sold its bus lines and nonetheless conk to sell or so of its financial businesses. From now on Teets strong more and more on the consumer products division; he bought Purex (1985) and around others. The next important incident was that the sold Greyhound peck Lines compact declared bankruptcy. In order to distance from that Teets changed the phoners name to Greyhound telephone dial (GD), which in any fiber marked the friendships new center on on the cons umer products division. But later reporting a loss of the dials division, GDs cable determine plunged. Nevertheless Teets kept on acquiring, and bought Breck. To stress the future concentre redden more they changed the orders name in 1991 to dial Corp. thusly dial sold its financial services division completely. After this restructuring dial was better off and things unquestionable well for Dial. But inside a short catamenia in the mid-90s serious problems affected Dial passim most of its businesses. The transportation manufacturing performed badly, so Teets given up of it. But Purex was doing poorly, too, and Teets constrict the advertising budget to 60%, which do Dial gratuitous market character (more than 2%). Teets phased out the Purex bleach line and few later the former(prenominal) successful Lunch Buckets. At the selfsame(prenominal) time Disney intractable to launch its own sail line and didnt sine qua non to prolong the read with Dials cruise lines for Disney case cruises. As a result Dial withdrew ! from the cruise-ship business. all the same so the food services set about problems, because the biggest part of the sales was made by serving airlines and airport restaurants. But airports allowed fast-food chains to move in and the airlines had to cut costs and began to offer snacks or goose egg instead of respectable meals. This hurt Dials provide business badly. The last relative incidence was the break up of Dial Corp. in 1996 into both(prenominal) individual businesses. Dial Corp. went on direct in consumer products, while the new one, Viad Corp., would distri only ife all the stay businesses (some financial, order and provide businesses). Teets retired in 1997. And Dials new dodge was to strain on consumer products and to confirm the clubs portfolio. 2)         What was the be corporate dodge hind end development of Greyhounds portfolio of investments up until the time that Teets was appointed CEO? Was Trautman correct to quest after this str ategy? What were its advantages and pitfalls? The main strategy was to diversify Greyhounds businesses. In the ancient Greyhound accelerated enormous profits, so the company privationed to diversify its business into other areas, and expanded into the bus manufacturing business and others. Trautmans goals were to make Greyhound recession-proof and to gain from anti-cyclical synergies. But furthermore he attempt not only to make the company recession-proof, yet even every individual division. So he achieved diversification inside diversification. In 1978, Greyhound´s holding company consisted of five run divisions: transportation, bus manufacturing, food and consumer products, financial, and services/ food service. Trautmann felt that he was shaping a diversified company that would bemuse a powerful base in many lines of business. He was affect to take the risk of acquiring some companies that would be failures as long as the overall health of the company was inflected. I think its important to diversify, but maybe its bette! r to diversify into related businesses, where you abide profit from you managerial experience and know-how. Diversification has al slipway advantages. In this case he gained from synergies with the bus manufacturing division, and increased the overall revenues. But the strategy had in like manner disadvantages, which were fatal in the Greyhound case. I think he hidden in thought(p) the overview and diversified in several unrelated business, where he could not gain from synergies and managerial experience and knowledge lacked. He should name stick to the transportation business, the bus manufacturing, and, maybe, financial services, which slang to do with both businesses (e.g. leasing, financing, redress of buses etc.). In these businesses he could have gained much profit and he could focus and concentrate on it. 3)         What environmental factors affected Greyhounds business? Could anything have been do to keep in line for environmental factors? In what way s did they distort the picture of Greyhounds performance? Some environmental factors influenced Greyhounds performance and the strong business. The first factors mentioned in the text were the recession and energy craunch in 1979-1980 and high quest rates in the azoic 1980s. These factors brought high profits to companys bus business and financial operating divisions. another(prenominal) factor was the change in consumer taste that changed the demand of several products Greyhound offered. In 1982, the bus transportation market was deregulated, and Greyhound got serious problems with competitors, because Greyhound mazed to monitor the environment. While being some kind of monopolist in this market for several decades, the company did not accusation about efficiency, customer response, caliber and innovation. So as competitors entered the market, they paid between 30-50% higher wages than them. They confused market share and finally sold the bus line in 1987. The crude bust in the archean 1980s brought a recession in the rea! l state market. Verex (real estate firm Greyhound growd) suffered long losses generated by insurance claims. A few years later, airlines cut their cost; with this they did not serve full meals anymore, but instead just snacks or nothing. what is more the airports allowed fast food chains to move in to diversify the airports supply to the customers. This incidence hurt Greyhounds food service business. Most measure you are not able to control the environment, because you shadowt influence it directly. But you washbowl be informed of changes, and you should eternally monitor it carefully. Sometimes you arsehole foresee some incidents or developments. The next thing is that you should unceasingly move on, develop further, and take overt stand appease even if times are good. Would Greyhound have been more aware of possible changes, they would have always tried to remain efficient. If they had done so, it would have been far more difficult to enter the bus transportation ma rket and gain share. 4)         What did Teets do to change Greyhounds corporate strategy and financial position in the 1980s? Analyze the rationale behind this strategy. Was it working? Teets tried to reconstitute the company. He sold the faint-hearted performing Armor feed Company and the bus line, because Greyhound was not able to compete with a new market environment. in time in the financial service free radical he sold several companies and tried to downsize the conglomerates businesses. Then he focused more and more on the consumer products group and acquired Purex Industries in 1985. The restaurant food services division was contributing the most to total revenues of Greyhound, so he wanted to strengthen it by purchasing Americas second largest airline catering and retailing business, Dobbs International Services. Furthermore he tried to strengthen the financial services group with purchasing Republic specie Orders, Inc., and returned to the cruise ship b usiness with buying Premier canvas Lines and making ! a set about with Disney for proposition cruises. The rationale was to strengthen the main businesses by acquiring better fitting companies and pillage bad performing ones. He wanted to focus more instead of diversify as much as before. Then he wanted to manage the existing businesses more efficient, but stay in the same niches. At first this strategy seemed to work, but as competition became harder in and the economical function changed in the 90s, the strategy proved to be not working at all. This caused much trouble and ended up in a scatter of the company in 1996 and the retreat of Teets in 1997. 5)         How has Teets strategy worked in the 1990s? In the first of the 90s Teets strategy seemed to work. Because of many spun offs of the loss-making businesses and a focus on a more narrow business line, the stock price rose of approximately 150% from 1990 to 1992. Additionally the consumer group was performing very well and strongly. And Teets did not only dow nsize the add of businesses, but also the amount of managers of one fourth. Even analysts had some hope that this would indicate a turnaround. But they were wrong. The economic attitude changed rapidly and affected or so every of Greyhounds businesses. The bus manufacturing division performed well in the mid-90s and Teets disposed of it. The Purex bleach line also performed badly, so it has been phased out. As a consequence of the weak-performing consumer products group, Teets cut advertising costs. But this caused a lost of shares of more than 2%, because with weak trade you cant compete with strong competitors like P&G. More problems faced Greyhound when Disney did not want to prolong theme cruise contract with Greyhounds cruise-ship line; Greyhound withdrew from the cruise-ship market. As mentioned preceding(prenominal) the airlines cut costs and had a bad impact on Greyhounds food service division. It seemed to be no more than a hodgepodge of different businesses. To create new protect of existing businesses, Greyhound shoul! d be personal line of credit into two individual companies in 1996. So you can speculate that Teets failed. 6)         Do you think that Dial should be split into two companies or that its assets should be divested? I think it would be a good idea to split it into individual companies and additionally change the management. The strategy has been proven to be not working at all since Trautman introduced it in the 70s. Greyhound always suffered on any problems. If Dial is split, they could introduce a new management for both companies and every firm could focus on a business. It would probably be much easier to restructure a company and develop a new strategy, if you can concentrate on one business. Later on they could acquire again new companies, but they should be more related to the core business and competencies. Dial was split in 1996 and Teets retired in 1997. Teets found his own company and operates a real estates business. And if you can see on their homepag e, Dial is now performing better. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

If you want to get a full essay, visit our page: write my paper