省錢大作戰 企業瘦身潮再起
摘錄自：天下雜誌 經濟學人電子報 2014/3/28
2014-03-25 Web
only 作者：經濟學人
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| 圖片來源：天下雜誌 |
百事可樂的不滿股東Trian Partners，在近期一封寫給董事會的信裡，是這麼描述百事可樂總部的：「美國最驚人的企業中心之一。」2年前，百事可樂開始了2.43億美元的總部升級計畫，資深行動投資人佩爾茲（Nelson Peltz）帶領的Train Partners認為，出售總部、裁減總部的員工，對投資人更為有利。
在1980年代靠著創造巨型財團致富的企業，應該已經停止了這種舖張之舉，但百事可樂並不孤單。研究公司Sanford C.
Bernstein指出，可口可樂的經常開支（一般、管理及銷售成本，不含廣告支出）達銷售額的30％，與百事可樂的32％不相上下。
重新審視經常開支，應該對許多大企業有利；例如，食品加工公司瑪氏食品（Mars），位於維吉尼亞郊區的總部便十分儉僕。除了自我膨脹之外，企業總部在功能、人數、資源上差異極大，當然還有許多原因；但也有證據顯示，近年來企業總部的規模正在增加。瑞士聖加倫大學管理學教授庫尼許（Sven Kunisch）團隊，調查了761間歐美大型企業在2007至2010年間的總部情況，約44％增加了總部的經常支出，減少的只有28％。
企業擴增總部有哪些可能因素？企業瘦身的潮流始於1980年代，並於世紀之交失去動能。此外，三項議題的重要性增加，似乎也都使增加總部員工人數，變得合理化：全球化代表了總部得監控更遙遠的業務；理論上，數位技術讓中央控管更為容易；最後，去除規範讓路給增加規範，總部法務部門的規模亦隨之提升。
911恐怖攻擊、金融危機等事件，可能也讓老闆覺得世界更加複雜。如果許多老闆和奇異老闆伊摩特（Jeffrey Immelt）有著同樣反應，並不令人意外；伊摩特在最近的致股東信中坦承，就像許多公司，奇異的過錯在於以複雜反制複雜，帶來更高的成本結構與虛假的風險控管感，並將自己隔離於市場熱度之外。現在，伊摩特決定扭轉路線；奇異計畫在2016年時，將經常支出佔銷售額比例從16％降至12％，並減少45％的總部成本。其他老闆也該跟進才是。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist
Newspaper Limited 2014
The Economist
Schumpeter
Fighting the
flab
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: March 25, 2014
Mar 22nd 2014 |
From the print edition
Corporate
headquarters have put on weight, and need to slim down again.
"ONE of the
most extraordinary corporate centres in America." This is how Trian
Partners, a disgruntled shareholder of PepsiCo, described the headquarters of
the snacks-to-soft-drinks company in a recent letter to its board. Set amid
lakes and fountains in 100 acres of wealthy Westchester County, New York,
PepsiCo's HQ features seven interconnected three-storey office buildings
designed in the 1960s by Edward Durell Stone, a pioneering American modernist
architect. Its crown jewel is the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens, named
after a former chief executive, which has works by artists such as Alexander
Calder, Henry Moore and Auguste Rodin. Mr Kendall reportedly intended the
garden to reflect his vision for the company by creating an atmosphere of
"stability, creativity and experimentation".
Two years ago
PepsiCo began a $243m upgrade of the complex to make space for more staff and
"create a more collaborative and innovative work environment". Trian,
run by Nelson Peltz, a veteran activist investor, thinks shareholders would be
better served by selling it and shedding many of its 1,100 workers, as part of
a broader cost-cutting and productivity-boosting strategy that would see
PepsiCo split in two.
The raiders of the
1980s, who made fortunes by seizing and shaping up flabby conglomerates, were
supposed to have put an end to corporate extravagance and administrative bloat.
But PepsiCo is not alone in now being accused of these. A recent report by
Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm, reckoned that Coca-Cola, which is
spending $100m on upgrading its home in Atlanta, has overheads (general,
administrative and sales costs minus advertising spending) that are 30% of
sales, almost as high as PepsiCo's 32%. Activist investors such as Trian, which
also has its guns trained on DuPont, a chemicals firm, may find inspiration in
other examples highlighted by Bernstein. Procter & Gamble's overheads ratio
is far higher than that of its consumer-goods archrival, Unilever; so is Estée
Lauder's compared with that of L'Oréal, another big cosmetics firm (see chart).
It is hard to
think of many big companies that could not benefit from taking a fresh look at
their overheads. One, perhaps, is Mars, a family-run confectioner with a tiny,
frugal HQ in suburban Virginia. Another is Berkshire Hathaway. In this year's
letter to shareholders, sent last month, the conglomerate's boss, Warren
Buffett, broke a long-standing "no pictures" policy to show off his
head-office team, just 24 strong. Mr Buffett's last big acquisition, of Heinz,
was made in partnership with 3G, a Brazilian private-equity firm whose boss,
Jorge Paulo Lemann, has a passion for cost-saving. Heinz had already undergone
a round of cuts under pressure from Mr Peltz. But 3G found plenty more to trim,
as it applied its "zero-based budgeting" approach, in which all
spending must be justified from first principles each year. Swathes of
managerial jobs were axed, as was the company's "aviation
department", which ran its corporate planes. Mr Buffett is impressed:
hitherto he has mostly bought well-run firms that he could largely leave alone,
but now he wants to do more deals like the Heinz one.
Of course there
are many reasons, other than differing levels of bloat, why businesses vary
greatly in which functions are performed centrally, and in how many people and
other resources are needed at head office. But there is evidence that companies
have piled on the pounds in recent years. A study by Sven Kunisch, a management
professor at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, and others looked at
the head offices of 761 big companies in Europe and America between 2007 and
2010. By the end of the period, a quarter of them had more than 600 staff at
HQ, whereas another quarter had fewer than 63. Two-thirds of the firms said
they had made significant changes during the period, generally strengthening
centralised control over their divisions. Some 44% of the firms had increased
the headcount at HQ, whereas only 28% trimmed. Of the 21 countries in which the
head offices were located, only ones based in Denmark and Greece reduced staff
numbers on average. All this at a time, in the wake of the financial crisis,
when companies were striving to protect their profit margins by cutting jobs
elsewhere in the workforce.
All aboard the
mother ship
What might explain
the return of head-office bloat? The crusade for leaner, more focused
companies, which began in the 1980s, ran out of steam after the turn of the
century. And three other issues moved up bosses' agendas, each seemingly
justifying extra staff at HQ: globalisation meant that the mother ship had more
far-flung operations to oversee; new digital technology made it easier, in
theory, to centralise control and oversight; and, starting with America's
Sarbanes-Oxley act in 2002, deregulation gave way to a growing regulatory burden,
bringing with it a bigger head-office compliance operation.
Various events,
from the September 11th 2001 terror attacks to the financial crisis, may have
made bosses view the world as an increasingly complicated and uncertain place.
It would not be surprising if many of them responded in the same way as Jeffrey
Immelt, the boss of GE: in his latest annual letter to shareholders, he
confessed that "We attempted to manage volatility through layers and
reviewers. Like many companies we were guilty of countering complexity with
complexity...more inspectors, multiple reviewers." The result was a
"higher cost structure, an artificial sense of risk management, and we
were insulating our people from the heat of the market." Mr Immelt has now
decided to reverse course. GE has launched a new simplification strategy, with
a goal of cutting overheads to 12% of sales from 16%, including a 45% reduction
in the cost of the corporate headquarters, by 2016. Other bosses would be wise
to do the same, or expect to have Mr Peltz and his fellow activists on their
case.
Economist.com/blogs/schumpeter
From the print
edition: Business
©The Economist
Newspaper Limited 2014
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