An albatross for Republicans_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

An albatross for Republicans

The 61-year-old Battenberg faces the fight of his life, with huge liabilities that are largely the result of Delphi’s birth as a spin-off from GM in 1998. The company, for example, simply can’t de-emphasize vehicle parts making as quickly as Battenberg would prefer, meaning that the biggest portion of its business is stuck in a deflationary vortex. Even the third quarter ending Sept. 30 was a reminder of that: Delphi said it expected to post a loss because of GM’s substantial production cuts during the period. The third-quarter performance also underscored that Battenberg has yet to get Delphi’s top and bottom lines to reflect the turnaround that seems to be under way. Delphi’s revenues actually dipped to $26 billion in 2001 from $29 billion the year before. And last year, though revenues were back up to $28 billion, the company posted a net loss of $56 million, the second year in the red of its five years of independence.

Like its former parent, Delphi remains saddled with huge retiree pension and health-care costs that, at best, it can only contain. Over the next several years, Battenberg concedes, Delphi will be whacked again as a wave of retiring white-collar baby boomers take their expertise and ideas out the door with them.

But what Battenberg already has achieved with Delphi is noteworthy, considering what he inherited. After World War II, GM’s far-flung network of captive parts-making operations helped it leapfrog rivals. But in the 1970s, it faced serious competition from Japanese imports, and in the ‘80s, sky-high union wages became an albatross for GM against cheap Asian manufacturing. Vertical integration had turned against the industrial behemoth, and parts operations had become GM’s embarrassing stepchild. In the early ‘90s, the decision was made to spin it off.