'CORPORATE LIPOSUCTION' CAN HAVE NASTY SIDE EFFECTS

摘要

In the 1990s, Unisys Corp., which supplied mammoth number-crunching computers to business, got slammed by the PC revolution. With sales of its mainframes slowing, the company embarked on a massive restructuring, closing plants, shutting down product lines, and reducing its workforce by 70,000. Those efforts have given Unisys a singular financial profile: Over the past five years, its earnings have grown 95 times faster than sales. That wholesale transformation of assets into earnings helped push Unisys stock from roughly $9 in the beginning of 1995 to almost $50 last October.