General Motors is still the largest company on the planet, with more than one million employees worldwide and annual revenue measured in billions of dollars. However, the company has been systematically struggling with its own size. Last week, GM announced the layoff of more than 30,000 employees and the closure of nine factories in the United States, after publishing the balance sheet for the first half of 2005 with losses of around US$3.8 billion. These cuts, however, will only lessen the company's agony, but will not solve the serious financial problems that afflict the Detroit giant. Among them, the size of employees' health care bills, one of the most expensive in the country, which reaches more than US$1,500 per car sold and restricts the company's reinvestment capacity.
On the other hand, Japanese and German cars manufactured in the USA are selling very well, thank you, as their factories closely monitor user preferences and develop aggressive marketing and consumer satisfaction campaigns. To avoid losing this race, GM needs to produce more reliable vehicles Belize Email List that are more than just a commodity . With the exception of trucks and SUVs — Special Utility Vehicles, which sell well, in addition to the resurgence of the venerable Cadillac division, the company's other products in the line are seen as only reasonable compared to other brands. In this sense, cost cutting is just a remedy for times of crisis and not a definitive solution.
What General Motors lacks is a little more vision at the highest levels of the company's management, in relation to a relentlessly competitive market such as penger cars, as Chrysler did, for example, in the 1980s, when it discovered the market for mini-vans and recently Honda and Toyota, which launched hybrid cars, powered by gasoline and electric motors. As we can see, GM is struggling to find its way to the future after decades of leading the Fortune 500 Magazine ranking , which lists the most powerful companies in the world. On the other hand, Google, a young company created just under seven years ago by two young people in Mountainview, in the state of California, seems to have already found the future. Founded less than a decade ago, the company already has a market value equivalent to US$123 billion, more than 10 times greater than the value of General Motors.
