The 2001 merger of TWA and American Airlines could have also been a part of this Top 10, given that AA lost 2 planes on 9/11, and started a year-over-year money losing streak that would eventually lead to their Chapter 11 filing in 2011, and 2013 acquisition by US Airways. This is especially true considering that American made almost no use of any assets they inherited from TWA (with the exception of the MD-80 aircraft, which are now in the process of being retired). The hub at STL was shut down and TWA employees were either stapled to the bottom of seniority lists or furloughed.
Kmart and Sears probably takes the cake for me. In corporate terms Sears is time honored and could survive based on name recognition with specific generations of Americans. I really don't know how Kmart has survived with the emergence of the big box department stores. So I wonder if Kmart will drag Sears out of business or the other way around.
#9, lead to the creation of the USRA that created Consolidated Rail Corp, (or CONRAIL), Conrail became one of the most profitable railroads, and was split up in 1999 between NS and CSX. Footage that you used came from Emery Gulash.
Enron and Dynegy. When Enron was failing, they had one, final chance: A merger with Dynegy but Ken Lay started doing what he always did best: being a cocky narcissist. He thought that, after the merger, he was going to take control and be king of the world but Chuck Watson, CEO of Dynegy, angrily reminded him that the company was being absorbed and he was not being promoted. Later, Watson, disgusted, called off the merger saying, "You couldn't give it to me." And that's when Enron breathed it's final breath.
Just a though, what about when WWF/E acquired WCW back in 2001? Looking at their viewer base and financial earnings, they both have done nothing but go down.
I worked Travelers when Primerica bought into Travelers. The company was bought for our name and umbrella logo. Travelers was spun off in 2002...we finally got our umbrella back several years later.
Daimler-Chrysler made the shittiest quality vehicles in the US. They made lots of lemons with defective paint, rust problems, defective engine design (sludge-filled 2.7 V6 engine), and the shittiest brittle plastic interiors ever. The only products they ever made that were good were the V8 engines. All that mostly went away when Fiat came in and finally got Chrysler competitive again with WAY better interiors made of leather and leatherette, nicer designs, huge investments in the factories, keeping up the tradition with muscle cars, and keeping solid axles in the beloved Jeep Wrangler. HOWEVER, they FUCKED themselves in the butt when they began using German transmissions by ZF Friedrichshafen. They are defective transmissions that raped Chrysler's quality ratings. Chrysler also seems to struggle with electronic quality control in the first year they begin making a new model. Takes them like 2 years to fix defects.
The sharpest aren't so sharp. I deal with people like these all the time and they will get stuck on something very elementary based...but it's left up to them to call the shots and look at what happens😨.
6 years after the Penn Central merger, the U.S. government created Conrail to take over. Conrail merged with CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway in 1999
I worked for AOL before and after the merger with Time Warner. It was a mistake at the time, but there was nothing I could do about it. Anyway it was fun working there until then, but all jobs were lost in the end, but a handful at the end. Take Care
MeganKoumori I always take comfort in the fact that all corporations are finite. Viacom will go bankrupt eventually. Even if it takes 100 years, it'll happen eventually.
Considering that Chrysler was doing very well in the 1990s and Daimler pretty much destroyed them, leading up to Chrysler being bailed out by the US and Canadian governments and sold off to Fiat in 2009, I would say that merger should have been number one. Had the Daimler-Chrysler merger never happened, one could guess that Chrysler would look very different today.
***** Both K-Mart and Sears were already on the downward spiral when they merged. What happened was pre-existing problems got pooled together instead of being fixed. It was like pouring sour milk and flat soda into the same glass - you ended up with a disgusting mix instead of a drinkable liquid.
Would you mix ground tuna with rice with oats with baking flour with yeast with spinach with sweet potato with honey with Chopped carrots and chopped apples with eggs with milk with cream and Stir it and bake it
personally i agree great compilation especially that of Alcatel Lucent , Daimler Chrysler and citi corp there is this mentality that the bigger you are the harder it is to fail i.e you are considered too big to fail but looking at this its a big lesson
This most certainly does not follow the requirements for the list, but I think a really big one to look into would be Duke Energy purchasing Crystal River Nuclear Station.
WB and UPN, took a semi decent family channel, and mixed it with a semi decent ghetto channel... it became home to the twilight fanbase where every successful drama of the 90s was ruined
+jmwloup5110 , the Swedish Nokia STILL EXIST selling tablet computers (and later in '16 smartphones) under their own name. Microsoft only bought their former phone tech (with Microsoft's own phone OS, of course) to be sold as Lumias. And Nokia also bought one of the companies on this list: Lucent Alcatel (Nokia will sell basic cellphones under the Alcatel name), so that's an update on this list...
Nokia.com no longer exists nokia network systems is all that does and was originally Siemens network systems before nokia bought it microsoft bought the original nokia and owns their mobile technology much as sbc global bought AT&T Corp just for sbc to do buisness as at&t Inc so American Telegraph & Telephone no longer exists
jmwloup5110, read further... There were news articles on which the Swedish Nokia were still to build smartphones later in '16 (using Android OS, as are the few tablet computers they make) UNDER THEIR OWN NAME, adding that buying Lucent Alcatel gives them access to the basic phone market through the Alcatel name brand, which it seems they intend to keep. So the same Nokia from Sweden (not the assets that Microsoft bought) will still be making phones, besides the other "industrial" products they never sold or kept growing by buyout. It is akin to Volvo Trucks, which is the original Swedish company that used to make cars after they sold the car making division to Ford (who later sold it to private enterprise Chinese car making company Geely, although the Chinese are giving the Swedish management quite a bit of leeway to build their own technology). It's NOT like the AT&T case you've mentioned, which correctly states that SBC (Southwestern Bell from Texas) bought Alexander Graham Bell's (the telephone's inventor founded the company) AT&T, the one founded in New Jersey and operated from NYC, to get their business name, which ends in today's AT&T from Texas, "a different animal"...
Small question, for the Citicorp - Travelers Group merger, it says it was around 140 billion, yet the narrator says it was 70 billion. Is the higher figure due to conversion to what it would be worth today?
I know that AT&T is doing well now, but it has got to have some of the worst mergers ever. I remember it kept bouncing around to different companies and now it's kinda taken over Cingular and tainted it.
to be fair, the Penn central merger practically led to economic downfall in America, because of the fact that most goods are transported by rail. When it became the biggest and went for bankruptcy 2 years later in 1970 the economy started to tank, now it isn't just the railways but it was the biggest railroad system of its time and when it went bankrupt just 2 years later this lead the a overall downfall in the railroad system and economy, and only lasted 8 years . . .
#1 also ensured the demise of WCW. While poorly written contracts led to the bigs dogs running the yard the merger ultimately killed it. AOL higher ups weren't a fan and Ted was no longer allowed to blindly fund WCW anymore. Eric Bichoff was going to buy it but when AOL/Time Warner dropped it from TV Eric's group backed out
Don't foregt about the SPSF (Southern Pacific-Santa Fe) merger in the 1980's! That was a failed railroad merger that was never even finalized! =P Though, luckily it paved way for more successful mergers, such as the DRGW (Rio Grande) 1988-89 merger with the SP, and subsequent BNSF merger in 1995-96! =D But of course the UP-SP merger of '96 was one of the most successful mergers of all time!
Monsanto company is so horrible with the weed killer that's carcigenic and Bayer acquiring that making the company look bad with it's association with it.
S'cuse me, but since 1890 when the Sherman Act was made federal law, it's been illegal to monopolize. Now a hand full of corporations own everything and all of us as well. I can't help but gloat at their losses. BTW, when are the FTC and the courts going to enforce those bans? Seems we a pay a lot of folks to not do their jobs... TBE
That was before the concept of "corporation" was introduced and recognized by law. A corporation is technically a person, hence the corp part which comes from the word corpus or body. Since a person has a protected freedom of speech, that extends to owning or selling property. A very clever way to circumvent anti-trust laws, don't you think?
I know they fought against monopolizing like blowing down a brick house its so obvious that shit still goes on..the trickle down system would be great if it actually worked
Axel Moor You know what's funny, pick any argument, from the holocaust to peanut butter, and you'll get people that chime in on both sides of the argument. Mention EA, not a single person comes to their defense, for good reason.
Michael Freeman It couldn't be because they exemplify corporate greed, or make really shitty games that they refuse to support because, exclusivity agreement.
Weren’t sears and Kmart starting to have problems before the merge and that’s why it happened in 1st place? Also I think the Railroad mergers were inevitable because of cars, buses, and planes
Packard Motor Car Co. and the Studebaker Corp...Packard had no idea how deeply in debt the Studebaker Corp. was in and two years later production of Packard cars ceased, soon after that the Packard name disappeared entirely. Then Studebaker moved their headquarters to Canada to save money by eliminating retirement payments.
The Penn Central was doomed even before the ink was signed thus signifying the end of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the New York Central Railroad. Management from the PRR disliked those from the NYC and vice versa. Abnormally harsh weather, a lack of proper maintenance to the track, computer systems that were different and did not sync with one another, and the failure to act on a merger plan to integrate the once two major rivals fell through, among many other reasons is why the PC was, and still is considered the worst railroad merger in U.S. history.
there were some conflicts with the government in terms of the laws for the railroads of the time that they had witch wasn't eliminated until the staggers act of 1980
The SPSF was just as bad, for it wasn't even finalized, and both companies were already making changes before they were granted permission to fully merge under the ICC's jurisiction. After the merger failed, both companies lost QUITE a bit of revenue (mainly SP), but were able to overcome their loses through the DRGW, BNSF, and subsequent UP mergers.
As well as Crisis Core, and a few others, but nothing as substantial as the failings of FF, the disappointment of Hitman Absolution, the mid-direction of Tomb Raider, and the abandoned Sleeping Dogs.
I honestly think Square soft and Enix becoming Square Enix is the worst. They were two amazing companies in their golden years. Now they release the same games over and over with the same assets.
Speaking of Sears and K mart what's happening to a lot of these stores is Amazon. They're hurting alot of these retailers Including Walmart & Target. But I still like to get up and shop We're out to look at the product get a feel for it before I buy it plus at these retail stores is much easier to return if you have to. Speaking of Sprint they just merged with T-Mobile So if they're under companies like metro and boost are now going to merge. Now as far as all these networks merge and I can't even keep up no more unless I go to the apps
Nintendo hired sony to make a cd add on to the snes, but had an argument over rights so nentendo made the CD-I (which failed) and sony successfully entered the consul race rivaling nintendo
The one I am thinking of isn't disastrous, it just ended with a good store closing down, in 2009 summerfield ( British food store ) filed bankruptcy but we're bought by a posh food store called the co operative ( which was also struggling ) it ended with the co operative filing bankruptcy and the only way for them to stay operational was to shut down summerfield :(
seems to me several of these mergers weren't exactly disastrous mergers.. kmart and sears merging didn't cause a disaster, both were already in a death spiral, and well they still are. pretty much the same with the others, they were headed for disaster separately, a merger just meant they sink together instead of sinking separately. the daimler /chrysler one was a disaster, it really seems that daimler was out to destroy chrysler, and even more so mitsubishi (which they also had a large chunk of, partially because they got chrysler's share) and they killed off what could have been one of the best super cars ever, the chrysler ME412.. evidently they were embarrassed that chrysler made a better / faster car then they could for far less, and in less time. with 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds, top speed around 248.
