Opel exits Australian market
General Motors Co (GM) started selling Opel brand cars in the Australian market on the 1st August 2012, through a franchised dealer network. Each of the 20 dealers had spent between $500,000 and $3,000,000 in marketing and showroom fit-out and had to sign a 5-year contract. GM also launched an extensive national advertising campaign using M & C Saatchi, Melbourne. However by June 2013, they had sold less than 2,000 Opel brand cars in the Australian market and in early August, GM announced they were ceasing sales of the vehicles after only 11 months as the venture had proved to be ‘unprofitable’.
Case Study: The Painted Apple Moth
In August 2002, New Zealand’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry had to decide on an eradication strategy for the painted apple moth, a potentially serious moth invader that had been discovered in West Auckland in 1999. These moths were predicated to be a threat to New Zealand’s plantation forests as well as its native bush. The predicted loss of export dollars came to $356 million. On 9 September 2002, the New Zealand Cabinet approved the expenditure of $90 million over three years for an all-out effort to eradicate the painted apple moth with the funding used to support 40 aerial spraying operations using the biological pesticide Btk, commercially available as Foray 48B.
The Collapse of Lehman Brothers
On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in the US, filed for bankruptcy. With $639