Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Wal-Mart: now greener, and more warm and fuzzy!

Bloomberg: Wal-Mart picks sites for stores reported on Dealbreaker:

Wal-Mart picks sites for stores (Bloomberg)Wal-Mart continues to demonstrate a high level of PR brilliance. The company has already put itself on the "right" side of issues like global warming and the minimum wage, as it blunts the constant criticisms against its business. Now the company has announced that it will open stores in several sites where there's a high level of unemployment, so that the stores will represent "jobs and opportunity zones". And the company will also start building locations on environmentally distressed properties as well as abandoned malls, so as to reduce the company's ecological footprint.

If by "environmentally distressed properties" Wal-Mart means former gas station locations and other industrial zones where the soil is contaminated by toxins and carcinogens, then in one stroke their strategy could breathe new economic life into run down areas, and at the same time reduce Wal-Mart's exposure to long-term pension payouts. Leverage an average employee lifespan of less than 50 years with reduced health benefits, and that would really shape up the bottom line!

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Re employee lifespan: What a wonderfully informed statement, which in other circumstances might be described as cynicism!