I don’t get who profits from this.

[Molly Brown]

It seems that frequently when I need a part for a door Stanley has purchased the company that sold it and now no longer carries it nor do they sell one of their own complete products as a replacement.

[Bill]

Sometimes when one corporation buys another corporation, it has more to do with greed or power than doing anything for customers.

Sometimes it is just a bookkeeping thing. A company may be losing money and for very little money a company making lots of money can buy that company, then use the losses as a tax write-off and the write-offs are more than the cost of the company. They could care less about the people working there or the company's customers.

Or they may just want to stick their "name" on the competition's building. Conquer the world! And again they could care less about the people working there or the customers.

And sometimes a company may have more value in its "parts" than what the purchase price is. Maybe a large company is doing well and needs another manufacturing plant. It might be less expensive to buy another company with an existing manufacturing plant and employees. Then switch that plant to manufacturing the products of the acquiring company - drop the previous products entirely. They just want the manufacturing plant and could care less about the other company's products or their customers.

Sometimes they might buy a company, fire everyone, then sell off all the property and this is more than the purchase price. Pure selfish greed!

A lot of people get hurt by all this. And they could care less. The people doing this might be making 50 million a year (which they can't spend), and they want to make 75 million a year or whatever. Sad what they do to people to get that extra 25 million which they will never be able to spend.

The current Comcast / NBC deal for example...

[GROVER]

More on the subject of corporate greed (sometimes called mergers and acquisitions).

The authors Kurt Vornnegut and Joseph Heller were guests at a lavish party at a Long Island beach home thrown by a Wall Street financial baron who was reported to have made $27,000,000 the previous year.

Vornnegut told Heller that the host made more money in one day than Heller realized in 40 years from his book, Catch 22.

Heller replied that he had one thing the host did not have.

"Enough"

JoeG