Word: abruptly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...with healthier partners. Instead of the robust annual sales growth of 15% to 20% that the industry enjoyed in the early 1980s, computer revenues will expand an estimated 6% to 8% during the next few years. That pace would delight most industrialists, but among computer makers it represents an abrupt comedown. Profits are being squeezed even more. Last week the world's No. 1 and No. 2 computer makers announced sharply lower earnings during the most recent quarter. IBM said its profits declined nearly 30%, to $877 million, and Digital Equipment's earnings were off more than...
...daily flights last Wednesday, many customers must have had a sinking sense of deja vu. Just five years after the airline emerged from a two-year bout with Chapter 11, Braniff said it was filing for bankruptcy protection once again. The company's decision seemed all the more abrupt because only last May it moved its headquarters from Dallas to Orlando and ordered 50 new Airbus A320 jetliners for $2 billion...
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN. John Nevin, the crusty chairman of Firestone, gives credit to Japan's Bridgestone for bailing out his company with a $2.6 billion buyout last year. But that has not removed the vast differences in the ways the two companies communicate. "I'm seen as terribly abrupt and abrasive," says Nevin. "If you're very direct, you're admired in American culture. The Japanese culture is much more subtle. I can never get them to tell me what they actually mean, and they may think I'm rude and crass. But both sides are only behaving in ways familiar...
...rackety Redgraves with ego intact: "She was the only one of us who wasn't shy. If someone asked her to get up and sing, it wouldn't have bothered her for three seconds." The family's expectation that Redgrave would go into show business was tempered by her abrupt adolescent growth spurt to an eventual 5 ft. 11 in. She towered over classmates of both sexes and was considered too tall for anything but character parts. Her father had her study ballet so she would move well and tap dancing so she might have a chance at musical comedy...
...subcommittee will be watching closely to see how well the new IRS commissioner, Fred Goldberg Jr., who stepped in after the abrupt resignation * of Lawrence Gibbs last March, will follow up on the allegations. "I think all of us understand that we have a big challenge ahead of us," testified Goldberg near the conclusion of the hearings. Last week's uncomfortable spotlight may have supplied the IRS with some much needed motivation. Said Edward Habecker, a former IRS official, in testimony at the hearings: "What is lacking today within the IRS is not the tools, but the desire to maintain...