In a recent interview given to the Spanish press, IBM Espana SA’s new managing director Joaquin Moya-Angeler said that since he was already playing a major role in the running of the company before his appointment as managing director, most changes he would want to make have already been made. He added, however, that he […]
In a recent interview given to the Spanish press, IBM Espana SA’s new managing director Joaquin Moya-Angeler said that since he was already playing a major role in the running of the company before his appointment as managing director, most changes he would want to make have already been made. He added, however, that he did want to carry out an annual reorganisation to shake the tree so the dead leaves fall off – to get rid of excess bureau-cracy. He maintained there was a lot of work to be done in simplifying processes within the company and that certain activities had to be restructured and decision cycles shortened. There would thus be more delegation to subsidiaries since they could react to customers more quickly. He also said that the company would be redirecting some resources to specific promising sectors – he named distribution, services and the financial world as growing areas. With regard to IBM Corp’s recent sale of part of its business and the adjustment in staff, he said these actions were due to the worldwide drop in demand: in Spain they began last year forecasting that industry would grow by 19% when in fact the growth rate scarcely reached 8%. For this year everyone was expecting increases of 5% and although he was in fact more optimistic, IBM Espana still needed to be careful in its spending due to the strengthening of the dollar and the stagnation in demand. He mentioned that the company wouldn’t be taking on as many employees as it had done in the last three years due to the slowing of the Spanish economy. Nevertheless, he said that IBM Espana would not be affected in any way by the parent’s latest measures except by the sale of the typewriter business as 22 people had transferred to it from IBM Espana. He said that for the Spanish subsidiary 1990 had been a reasonably good year, for the company reported an increase in unit sales of 26% and a revenue rise of 20%, while the industry at large grew by just 16%.
Number one in PS/1s
The first quarter of this year had been very bad for the whole world including IBM Espana, which grew by only 5%. In addition last year’s first quarter had been one of the best on record. However, looking to the future, things were moving faster than last year. IBM Espana’s order book had grown 10% and now things were looking up as regards borrowing and interest rates. Moya-Angeler was convinced that the company’s growth would at least match the industry this year, if not marginally exceed it. He claimed that information technology had not yet peaked in Spain and that it was, in fact, far from doing so because the industry represented just under 1.8% of the Gross Domestic Product, while in developed countries the figure was more like 3%. He thinks the Spanish market is far from being saturated. With regard to the European computing industry, he said that the situation was not good since it had too much capacity for the level of demand, resulting in high costs, low profits and thus pressure on financial resources and less room for innovation. Moya-Angeler pointed out that Spain was the European country where IBM sold most PS/1s last year – mainly into the fireside market. In fact during 1990 IBM Espana sold a total of 100,000 personal computers. Unfortunately this year does not look so good, and Moya-Angeler thought sales would be more moderate as the rest of Europe hadn’t experienced such major growth last year. Finally, he said that IBM Espana was not shown enough recognition by the Spanish government, after all, he argued it is one of Spain’s main exporting companies and 1992 is fast approaching.
