40-27B How to destroy a giant corporation from within

Corporate mega-mergers keep being announced with great hoopla, but – as we’ve learned from promises made by merging airlines, banks, drugmakers, etc. – most are likely to deliver less than nothing. Take 2015’s ballyhooed combine of two food giants, Kraft and Heinz. Today, the merged colossus has become a shamble, far less than either had been separately. What happened? Greed.

3G, a Brazilian investment outfit, was the primary driver of the merger, and it promptly installed its financial hotshots as top execs. Unfortunately, they imposed a rigid bit of managerial humbuggery that amounted to the practice of corporate thuggery – cut employees, divert revenues to the new owners, buy up other corporations… and repeat the plunder.