h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A company already pretty much top of the most hated corporation in the world (second maybe only to Exxon/Mobil), seem determined to take first place in that poll for the new year;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,862655,00.html

This from the people who brought you the ever popular powdered milk disaster - an iniative, I recently learnt, backed by 'Deadly' Ernest Saunders, the only man in medical history to have Alzheimers go into remission. There is a special circle of hell reserved for him, I'm sure.

pitiful

Good grief, what's the point? Do they really think they'll get it? All this creates for the is bad publicity. Morons.

On the plus suide- MaccyD's has gone into the red

Yeah, I posted about that in the MaccyD's vs the punters thread. They are actually shutting franchises for the first time in years, though mostly it was noticeable that many of those to be closed were in Muslim countries (which must tell us something about consumer reactions to world event.)

One of those likely to go is the Oxford Street 'branch'.

I wish they'd close some in Derby- there's far too many for a small town

Boycott Nestle!!!

Nice to hear MaccyD's is shutting down places!

Queegle

Good grief. Have Nestlé got a corporate death wish... Ethiopia haven't the money to pay them so there's no way they'll get their money, but Nestlé must be aware that the press will rip them to pieces for this (and rightly so)...

*shakes head in disbelief*

http://www2.gol.com/users/bobkeim/Foodhunger/Coffee/ftorgs.html

For those who want to know more about how to buy Coffee ethically (Nescafe is a big part of Nestle).

I'd like to think the publicity would harm them, but they seem to have survived these sort of exploitation scandals before. Annoying to as I really fancy a Kit Kat now I think about it.

Pure scum!
Looks like I'm gonna have to start a rumour that someone is putting glass in some of their sweets!
B******ds.

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Coffee, chocolate, cereals - nestle are one of the biggest food producers in the world.

Whcich is kind of ironic when they want to take food from the starving, it would appear...

shows you where the profit imperative stands in relation to other imperatives such as moral and ethical, when it comes to these huge transnational corporations.

the reality is if Nestle were to give 1% of their post tax profits to alleviate world hunger hundreds of thousands of people could be saved.
from the Nestle perspective, one would have thought this made more sense as in the long term it has the potential to create more consumers for their products and therefore much greater profits.

Clearly short termism also rules !!!!!!

Hmmm, thinking about it... could this just be a very complex piece of PR...

If Nestle just wrote off the debt, no one would care...

But if everyone knows that Nestle are owed money, one spokesman (or scapegoat - take your pick) starts complaining about it to the press - thus the whole world knows about the debt and is up in arms, then in a couple of weeks time, the Nestle Board of Directors decide, in a blaze of publicity, to magnanimously write off the aforementioned debt...

Public opinion afterwards... "Ahh, so maybe Nestle isn't so bad after all - they did effectively give up all that money"

Me? Cynical? Nawwww!

*waves at everyone from the corner*

Hello?

No net access here! What is the link to? Someone care to explain what the big bad Nestle corperation are doing?

Ok, quick summary...

In 1975 the Ethiopian Government nationalised a privately owned company - Elidco. A german company had shares in this company and lost money...

In 1986, Nestle bought out the German company in question.

In 1998, The Ethiopian government sold the company for $8.7 million to a local firm, they are offering to pay Nestlé $1.5 million.

Nestlé say they want $6 million.


Just to put this in perspective...

Ethiopian GDP for 2001: $46 billion (Source CIA factbook)
Nestlé - Consolidated sales January to September 2002: $46.5 billion (Source: Nestlé)(Giving an estimate of annual sales in the region of $62 billion)

Oh - and the market for one of the Ethiopians biggest exports - coffee has recently plumetted - leaving Ethiopia in the smelly stuff and one of the manufacturers of Nescafe (guess who!) making record profits.

And in English? The problem is?

Try a little more simple...

Nestle + 6 Billion USD = slightly increased profits
Ethiopia - 6 Billion USD = People Die!

Apologies - previous post should have read million, not billion