If you got info about the shareowners, revenues, general ownership, how the business model looked like, and such, please post it here

Especially information about how CBM was constructed business wise is appreciated.

Last edited by tomazkid on 17-Nov-2009 at 05:38 PM.

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@tomazkid

The book "On the Edge - The Spectacular Rise & Fall of Commodore" has a lot of info on this topic. It's also a good read.

website link

TrevorD

_________________
No, I don't need no reason, I'm just breezin'

@TrevorDick

I am aware of that book, and ordered it last week from Amazon.

The problem is, I don't know when it ships, so can't count on getting it in time.


So looking for something else, sure there should be something available on the Internet?

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@tomazkid

I'm sure you've seen this

website?

TrevorD

_________________
No, I don't need no reason, I'm just breezin'

@TrevorDick

Yes, seen that, commodore.ca contains a lot of useful information.

As well as Jeremy Reimers articles at Ars Technica, as well as some of his own pages.

What I have not been able to find, are notes about who did own the most shares in Commodore, I guess it might have been Irving Gold, seen figures of him owning 17% of 30 million shares in mid 80-ties, but who owned the rest, and how did the ownership change when Tramiel left ?

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@TrevorDick

Quote:

TrevorDick wrote: The book "On the Edge - The Spectacular Rise & Fall of Commodore" has a lot of info on this topic. It's also a good read. TrevorD

I second that, even though it can be a bit depressing. I bought and read the book while I was waiting for the next installment of this:

http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/12/amiga-history-part-5.ars

_________________
"Unix is supposed to fix that." -- Jay Miner

@tomazkid

Read that book. It's really a masterpiece.

_________________

@Phantom

I will, whenever I get it.

Slow amazon....

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@tomazkid

You can allways mail to Mehdi Ali and ask.

@arsipaani
From your link:

Quote:

Mehdi has been a principal of the firm since its inception in 1996. Mehdi’s background includes more than twenty years of operating experience. His prior experience includes serving as the President of Commodore International, where he accomplished a major operational turnaround.

major operational turnaround

Yes, that it one way of putting it

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@bison

I can also recommend the "Amiga Retrospective" series in Amiga Future magazine.

TrevorD

_________________
No, I don't need no reason, I'm just breezin'

@Thread

From the Commodore History Page:


Quote:

In 1993 Commodore lost $357 million and its market share shrank to 1.7%

This states the management strategy post-Tramiel:

Quote:

After Commodore's founding CEO left the company when Commodore's other major stockholders refused to allow his sons to rule in his wake, he sold all his shares in the company (at about $40 a share -- for a total of about $80 million dollars). When he was gone, the CEO slaughterhouse commenced. When the remaining majority stockholder (Prudential Insurance) saw that Commodore was making less money than it once had, Commodore's board of directors started hiring and firing CEOs in rapid succession, trying to find someone who would make the company more profitable. Finally the stockholders settled on CEO Mehdi Ali.

Link

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@Thread

That means Tramiel had around 2,000,000 shares as a majority stake in 1984!

A slightly toungue in cheek explanation of Irving Gould's/Medhi Ali's strategy is as follows:


Quote:

Commodore went bankrupt in 1994 under the leadership of Mehdi Ali (also known as Little Brown Man) who was hired by Irving Gould to extract all cash worth from Commodore's operations before shutting down the company. Ali was very successful in his task.

Last edited by BigD on 18-Nov-2009 at 03:21 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Tramiel mean?

Well, from a businessman point of view in another company like Texas Instruments, I can see why, but for technology for the masses, with low prices on C-64 he brought the computer to the masses.

Hard to say what that really means today, but it might perhaps had a major impact on advance to the age of IT we have today.

Recon it could have happened without C64 as well, but perhaps with with a few years delay.


one example: Linus Torvalds got his computer interest from a C64.

Last edited by tomazkid on 18-Nov-2009 at 03:26 PM.
Last edited by tomazkid on 18-Nov-2009 at 03:20 PM.

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@tomazkid

Quote:

Tramiel mean?

Sorry, that was a typo! Corrected now!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

heh, that letter gives it a different meaning

_________________
Site admins are people too..pooff!

@tomazkid

Quote:

major operational turnaround

Indeed.

IIRC the guy before Mehdi was the one who did manage a positive turn around (focusing on Amiga IIRC and cutting PC line) tho not to sure about that.. Can't recall the name of the guy..

_________________
~
Everything you say will be misquoted and used against you..
~

@Seer

Thomas Rattingan was replaced by Irving Gould and then Medhi Ali ('The Little Brown Man' as he was called by the engineers who loathed him). Rattingan had become successful and Irving Gould saw him as a threat to his own position! He was contracted up until 1991 and could have made all the difference in that time!

Here's an article on how it was reported at the time:

Rattingan Replaced by Irving Gould as CEO of Commodore

Last edited by BigD on 19-Nov-2009 at 08:56 AM.
Last edited by BigD on 19-Nov-2009 at 08:49 AM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@tomazkid

Sales and pretax income below . Let me know if you want some hard to get obscure data on Commodore. (email in profile)

fyear Sales PreTax Income

1965 7.1470 -0.5110
1966 5.9100 0.1800
1967 3.7270 -0.1340
1968 4.1400 0.3050
1969 7.4770 0.6790
1970 9.4180 0.6410
1971 13.4940 -0.3250
1972 22.1520 2.0050
1973 32.8490 3.5610
1974 49.8510 0.5210
1975 55.8770 -5.0630
1976 55.9350 3.3960
1977 46.1750 2.2420
1978 50.1510 5.2150
1979 71.1240 8.0200
1980 125.6000 18.3000
1981 186.5000 30.8000
1982 304.5000 50.8000
1983 681.2000 112.9000
1984 1267.2000 (wow) 224.5000
1985 883.1000 -124.6000
1986 889.3000 -123.7000
1987 806.7000 32.4000
1988 871.1000 67.6000
1989 939.7000 60.6000
1990 887.3000 -8.5000
1991 1047.2000 52.6000
1992 911.0000 25.4000
1993 590.8000 -356.0000 (ouch!)

-edit- hmm, data doesn't table well here.

Last edited by Einar on 19-Nov-2009 at 09:00 AM.

_________________

@Thread

Interesting info:

Quote:

Despite this technological advance, Commodore reported losses in the first two quarters of fiscal 1990---losses Forbes magazine placed at the feet of Irving Gould. Forbes criticized Gould's penchant for hiring and firing executives and described him as an absentee landlord who, as a Canadian citizen, could spend no more than three days a week in the United States without paying American taxes. One analyst told Forbes, "Irving tries to minimize taxes, hates the day-to-day stuff and doesn't like to push the product." In April 1990 Commodore introduced the Amiga 3000. Released in the midst of an industry buzz about the possibilities of multi-media systems--a concept Commodore had been pushing since its beginning--the 3000 retained Amiga's edge. It cost thousands less than competing systems and Byte called it "the most capable multimedia platform you can get in a single box." It also came with an authoring system that, according to the Wall Street Journal, made "it rather easy to pull together a multi-media presentation." Moreover, according to Byte, Commodore had "finally defined a focus for the Amiga line and staked its claim to the emerging multimedia market." Perhaps because of this, Commodore convinced many retailers--some still smarting from the company's mid-1980s decision to sell to discount chains--to carry the system. In fiscal 1992 Commodore sold more than one million Amigas, pushing that computer's installed base to well over 3.7 million. Nevertheless, overall sales fell from &Dollar;1.04 billion to &Dollar;911 million, primarily because of lower peripheral sales, a discontinuation of lower end MS-DOS based PCs, price reductions on the ever-surprising Commodore 64 (650,000 units sold), and disappointing sales of CDTV, a new system that combined compact disc sound and video with interactive Amiga technology. As a result, Commodore reported a loss for its fourth quarter and yearly profits that fell to &Dollar;27.6 million from 1991's &Dollar;48.2 million.

Link

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios