Big is back ①

Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades. Now they have the advantage again
104. Big is back
Aug 27th 2009 From The Economist print edition

Corporate giants were on the defensive for decades. Now they have the advantage again

104-1-484

IN 1996, in one of his most celebrated phrases, Bill Clinton declared that "the era of big government is over". He might have added that the era of big companies was over, too. The organisation that defined capitalism for much of the 20th century was then in retreat, attacked by corporate raiders, harassed by shareholders and outfoxed by entrepreneurs.
Great names such as Pan Am had disappeared. Others had survived only by dint of huge bloodletting: IBM sacked 122,000 people, a quarter of its workforce, between 1990 and 1995. Everyone agreed that the future lay with entrepreneurial start-ups such as Yahoo!which in late 1998 had the same market capitalisation with 637 employees as Boeing with 230,000. The share of GDP produced by big industrial companies fell by half between 1974 and 1998, from 36% to 17%.
Today the balance of advantage may be shifting again. To a degree, is responsible. It has devastated the venture-capital market, the lifeblood of many young firms. Governments have been rescuing companies they consider too big to fail, such as Citigroup and General Motors. Recession is squeezing out smaller and less well-connected firms. But there are other reasons too, which are giving big companies a self-confidence they have not displayed for decades.

A. 어휘
Corporate giants 거대회사들. defensive 방어적인. celebrated 저명한.
phrase 語句(어구). define 定義(정의)하다. in retreat 退却(퇴각) 중에 있는.
raider 침략자. harass 괴롭히다, 시달리게 하다. shareholder 株主(주주).
outfox 보다 한 수 더 뜨다, 속이다. entrepreneur 新生(신생) 기업가, 청부업자.
by dint of ...에 의하여. bloodletting 放血(방혈), 출혈.
sack 해고하다. capitalisation 주식자본, 자본 現價(현가).
share 점유율. advantage 강점, 優越(우월). shift 이동하다.
To a degree 어느 정도. the financial crisis 금융위기. devastate 황폐시키다.
venture-capital 투기자본. firm 회사. rescue 구조하다. recession 경기후퇴.
squeeze out 짜내다. self-confidence 자신, 자신과잉. display 보여주다, 전시하다.

B. 구문
- He might have added→In fact he did not added.(가정법과거완료 귀결절)

104-2-485
Big can be beautiful…

Of course, big companies never went away. There were still plenty of first-rate ones: Unilever and Toyota continued to innovate through thick and thin. And not all start-ups were models of success: Netscape and Enron promised to revolutionise their industries only to crash and burn. Nevertheless, the balance had shifted in favour of small organisations.
The entrepreneurial boom was supercharged by two developments. Deregulation opened protected markets. Some national champions, such as AT&T, were broken up. Others saw their markets eaten up by swift-footed newcomers. The arrival of the personal computer in the 1970s and the internet in the 1990s created an army of successful start-ups. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer in 1976 in the Jobs family's garage. Microsoft and Dell Computer were both founded by teenagers (in 1975 and 1984 respectively). Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google in Stanford dorm rooms.
But deregulation had already begun to go out of fashion before the financial crisis. The Sarbanes-Oxley act, introduced after Enron collapsed in disgrace, increased the regulatory burden on companies of all sizes, but what could be borne by the big could cripple the small. Many of today's most dynamic industries are much more friendly to big companies than the IT industry. Research in biotechnology is costly and often does not bear fruit for years. Natural-resource companies, whose importance grows as competition for resources intensifies, need to be bighence the mining industry's consolidation.

A. 어휘
through thick and thin 萬難(만난)을 무릅쓰고, 始終一貫(시종일관)하여.
start-up 도전적인 기업. balance 균형, 저울. entrepreneurial 기업의.
supercharge 過給(과급)하다, 힘을 지나치게 쏟다. deregulation 規制(규제)철폐.
break up 해체하다. swift-footed 발이 빠른. army 무리, 떼.
start-up 새로 생긴 기업. garage 車庫(차고). respectively 각각.
Stanford dorm 스탠포드 대학교 기숙사. financial crisis 금융위기.
act 법령. collapse 붕괴하다. disgrace 불명예. regulatory burden 규제의 부담.
bear-bore-borne 견디다. cripple 무력하게 만들다, 해치다.
natural-resource 천연자원. competition 경쟁. intensify 강화되다.
mining industry 광물산업. consolidation 통합, 합병, 강화.

B. 구문
- only to crash and burn.=but they crashed and burned.
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