article thumbnail

Divest With Care

Harvard Business Review

GE's expertise at building and marketing engineered products is legendary, but media and entertainment call for different skills. Pfizer divested its consumer health care business in 2006, selling it to J&J for more than 20x EBITDA. One question that seems reasonable in light of the low ($1.75 GE-NBC/Universal. Pfizer Inc.

article thumbnail

Shape Strategy With Simple Rules, Not Complex Frameworks

Harvard Business Review

While its competitors were spending lavishly on new equipment, ALL repaired decommissioned engines from its "dead fleet," bought used locomotives from African carriers, and replaced damaged sections of the main line with dismantled tracks from abandoned parking stations.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

The Secrets to TripAdvisor's Impressive Scale

Harvard Business Review

In founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer wanted to take his hard core engineering skills and apply them to vertical search in travel. That is, build a massive database of travel information that provided a white label search engine for travel sites like Expedia and Travelocity. billion market capitalization as of this writing.

EBITDA 10
article thumbnail

Women, Finance the World You Want

Harvard Business Review

This friend also studied engineering in college and knows how to code. Financial services professionals may sidetrack us by slinging around financial terms like market cap, P/E, or EV/EBITDA, but investing is ultimately about achieving two goals at once — financing our personal dreams and making a down payment on the world we want.

Finance 10