Word: perot
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Every good and excellent thing stands moment by moment on the razor's edge of danger, and must be fought for. -Words engraved on a plaque outside H. Ross Perot's Dallas office...
...Perot, the son of an East Texas cotton and cattle trader, apparently genuinely believes that philosophy. In 1962 he quit a safe job as an IBM computer salesman to work for Blue Cross-Blue Shield and to start his own computer software company, Electronic Data Systems. By 1969 it had grown enough to make Perot a billionaire at the age of 39. That left little danger; so Perot, who might be described as a mixture of Billy Graham and Don Quixote, has sallied forth to rescue Wall Street from the dragons plaguing it. In 1970 he heeded pleas from John...
...enjoys a nightmare situation," says a Dallas associate-and that is exactly what Perot has found on Wall Street. Though the stock market last week rebounded from a four-month tail spin, prices as measured by the Dow Jones industrial average have still fallen 15% from their mid-January peak...
Brokerage failures are still common, and some big houses are cutting salaries and laying off employees because trading volume is down. First-quarter volume on the American Stock Exchange fell a disastrous 42% below a year earlier. Perot himself compares operating in that climate to "trying to farm without rain," but he is confident that he can turn rain maker...
Like almost everyone else on Wall Street, Perot believes the fundamental problem is the flight of the small investor from the market. Raising commissions, as one New York Stock Exchange faction is trying to do, he thinks is precisely the wrong strategy. Perot advocates instead a radical change in Wall Street's whole commission structure -basing fees not on how many trades a broker arranges but on how well his customers make out on their investments. "The typical broker," he says, "does not see himself as making money for his customer; he is after the commission he makes...