Harley on the chopping block?

[98valk]

http://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/is-kkr-about-to-buy-harley-davidson

[cookiedough]

would not surprise me it happens since more and more companies are merging or being bought out by another company.  Sometimes for the good, sometimes not.

The higher ups at my wife's fairly large company keep buying more and more smaller companies up it seems the past several years.  Some good,  some not so good.   Yet, the higher ups just did a few months ago a horribly stupid decision by getting rid of their Accounts Payable dept. consisting of about 12 people sent jobs to India.  HORRIBLE decision:  India employees are doing horribly with no direction and enough so it might demise the company and sounds like customer service and credit will be going that route as well.    They got rid of most of those 12 employees, some there over 25 years not making HUGE bucks anyways and all for not since they had to get in 3-4 more A/P people to get the mess created from ruining the company.  Wife found out the newly promoted a/p supervisor now wants to quit it is so screwed up NO way out.   Ruining of a company possibly by just getting rid of 1 dept. of 12 people - DUMB!!  12 employees keeping up paying bills is piddly money for the size of the company only to save a few bucks in hourly wages paying India people who can barely speak and read English.  Hiring say 24 India people at 3 bucks per hour vs. 12 Americans at 16 per hour does not make sense if having to give India people health insurance and other benefits let alone pissing off vendors not getting paid.

[RDAbull]

The last time that happened, AMR bought them.  Totally screwed up a pretty good company.
You can bet your butt that if KKR buys them it will be to the benefit of KKR and the detriment of Hardly.
KKR will hold on to them for 5-8 years and then sell a stripped down version back to the public in an IPO for a lot more that you could buy the stock for today.

[six2go #152]

"The last time that happened, AMR bought them."

Nope, that was AMF.

[Reb]

would not surprise me it happens since more and more companies are merging or being bought out by another company.  Sometimes for the good, sometimes not.

The higher ups at my wife's fairly large company keep buying more and more smaller companies up it seems the past several years.  Some good,  some not so good.   Yet, the higher ups just did a few months ago a horribly stupid decision by getting rid of their Accounts Payable dept. consisting of about 12 people sent jobs to India.  HORRIBLE decision:  India employees are doing horribly with no direction and enough so it might demise the company and sounds like customer service and credit will be going that route as well.    They got rid of most of those 12 employees, some there over 25 years not making HUGE bucks anyways and all for not since they had to get in 3-4 more A/P people to get the mess created from ruining the company.  Wife found out the newly promoted a/p supervisor now wants to quit it is so screwed up NO way out.   Ruining of a company possibly by just getting rid of 1 dept. of 12 people - DUMB!!  12 employees keeping up paying bills is piddly money for the size of the company only to save a few bucks in hourly wages paying India people who can barely speak and read English.  Hiring say 24 India people at 3 bucks per hour vs. 12 Americans at 16 per hour does not make sense if having to give India people health insurance and other benefits let alone pissing off vendors not getting paid.

If only Harley could be like the other great "American" Company founded before them

Damn I should be a marketing engineer! 

[baldo]

http://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/is-kkr-about-to-buy-harley-davidson

That's a well written article. Not a Harley fan, but I'd really hate to see it get chopped up by a vulture capitalist equity firm....

[RDAbull]

"The last time that happened, AMR bought them."

Nope, that was AMF.

Damn fat fingers.......and lack of proofreading.

[cookiedough]

Reb,

Are you sure you are not a sales and marketing engineer instead?

Pretty soon you will be selling that Honda and go buy yourself a John Deer Gator (etc.) with radial road tires by-passing 2 wheels all together, assuming you can remove the rev limiter only able to go 60 mph since am sure you will want to be over 70mph on the road with the Gator UTV?  

http://www.deere.com/en_US/products/equipment/gator_utility_vehicles/gator_utility_vehicles.page?

Do you get an employee discount?  Since this Gator 860 with power steering is getting very good reviews and for 2016 also upped the speed to 60mph vs. last year only 53 mph.    Nice to have a dump bed utility UTV that is also darn near a full fledged sport UTV.

http://www.deere.com/en_US/media/player/youtube_player.html?src=%20https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV4KDYwjdPo

In the 90's when I use to work for GMAC financing,  I got GM employee purchase pricing which was about 20% off msrp, give or take, not too shabby.    20% off a 12K Gator is a great deal.