Company Profiles
How did the world’s biggest companies get so big? And what makes some high flyers ultimately fail? Learn about business models, how companies are structured, and the ways major companies make money, handle competition, and build business empires.
Company Profiles
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Disastrous investments in mortgage-backed securities and the American housing-market debacle brought the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank to bankruptcy in 2008. Learn how it happened.
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Based on direct sales and service, not franchised dealerships, Tesla has paid particular attention to expanding its network of charging stations, the key to growing the electric vehicle business. And it’s expanding into home energy-storage services.
Learn More What Makes Tesla’s Business Model Different? -
The typical American investment-banking hierarchy is investment analyst, associate, vice president, senior vice president, and managing director.
Learn More The Hierarchy of an Investment Bank -
Establishing Alphabet as a parent company, allowed Google to expand outside of internet search and advertising to acquire companies in areas including robotics, life sciences, healthcare, and anti-aging—as well as better protect itself against antitrust violations and account for different income streams.
Learn More Why Google Became Alphabet -
The three most famous early monopolies were Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Company (now U.S. Steel), John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, and the American Tobacco Company. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was forced to break up in 1982. The diamond merchant De Beers group is a more recent near-monopoly.
Learn More What Are the Most Famous Monopolies? -
Coca-Cola has been the market leader since 2004. Pepsi is number two, followed by Dr. Pepper-Snapple.
Key Terms
- Business Model
A business model is a company’s core strategy for profitability, including the products or services it will sell, target markets and anticipated expenses.
- Fortune 100
These are the top 100 of the Fortune 500—the top companies by reported revenue.
- MSCI
An acronym for Morgan Stanley Capital International, MSCI provides investment data and analytics services to investors and is best known for its series of stock indexes.
- Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC)
This company provides clearing and settlement services for the financial markets, settling most security transactions in the U.S.
- Razor-Razorblade Model
In this pricing strategy, one product is sold at a discount or loss while its companion product is sold at a premium. It was popularized by Gillette, which sold safety razors at cost and replacement blades for a profit.
- Worldcom
Worldcom was a telecommunications company that went bankrupt in 2022 after a massive accounting fraud, the biggest accounting scandal in U.S. history.
- Paypal
This online payment platform offers low-cost services to individuals and businesses. It is a very secure method of sending payments online and also offers debit cards, credit card readers, and lines of credit.
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Explore Company Profiles
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