Come on boys, are you committed to international expansion or not? For Walmart, with $122bn in earnings over the past decade, it looks, perhaps, a little halfhearted to pay just $24m in pibes for building permits in Mexico, as The New York
Come on boys, are you committed to international expansion or not? For Walmart, with $122bn in earnings over the past decade, it looks, perhaps, a little halfhearted to pay just $24m in pibes for building permits in Mexico, as The New York Times alleges.
来吧伙计们，你们到底会不会尽全力国际扩张？沃尔玛(Walmart)在过去十年的收入高达1220亿美元，而根据《纽约时报》指称，为了在墨西哥获得开店许可，沃尔玛只花了2400万美元用于贿赂，看来并没有全力以赴。
Markets were nonplussed, sending Walmart’s shares down 5 per cent and those of its majority-owned Mexican subsidiary by twice that much. Investors were not, of course, selling because the small sum reflects a lack of enthusiasm. And it would take the prospect of a truly massive fine under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to justify the roughly $12bn in market value lost in the sell-off. The worry is more that because the allegations involve a number of Walmart’s senior managers, significant leadership disruption could ensue.
市场惊慌失措，导致沃尔玛股价下跌了5%，而沃尔玛持有多数股份的墨西哥子公司，股价跌幅是沃尔玛的两倍。当然，投资者们抛售，并不是因为上面那个小数字反映出沃尔玛热情不足。而且，除非沃尔玛因违反《反海外腐败法》(Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FCPA)而遭到巨额罚款，这样的抛售——沃尔玛因此损失了大约120亿美元的市值——才能被证明是合理的。引发市场担忧的更重要原因是，沃尔玛多名高管都涉嫌卷入贿赂案，这可能会引发领导层大震荡。
Still, the panic looks a bit overdone. Yes, the Mexican operation is growing faster than the US one – its 10-year average sales growth is 18 per cent, more than twice the rate of the US supercenters. Profits are strong too: operating margins in Mexico are comparable to US levels and return on assets are a shade higher than the corporate average. But Walmart Mexico’s sales amount to just 6 per cent of Walmart’s overall, even before the minority owners’ portion is backed out. It is not as if the whole Mexican business is in danger of disappearing.
不过，市场的恐慌还是有点儿过了头。没错，沃尔玛墨西哥业务的增速超过美国业务，其销售额10年平均增长率达到18%，比在美国的那些大型超级市场高出一倍多。利润水平也很高：沃尔玛在墨西哥的营业利润率与美国业务相当，而资产回报率比公司平均水平略高一些。但墨西哥销售额只占沃尔玛总销售额的6%，这还是在少数股东的权益没有扣除的情况下。目前无迹象表明，整个墨西哥业务有关张的危险。
But Walmart is a company that badly needs a growth story, and international expansion is it. The US market is increasingly saturated. If Walmart runs into expensive and growth-constraining legal problems in Mexico (a quarter of international square footage), might there be bad news coming in developing markets such as China (a fifth) or Brazil (a tenth) – and will nascent markets such as Africa and India prove slow going? That $24m may turn out to be a very big small number.
但是，沃尔玛是一家亟需找到增长点的公司，国际扩张的意义正在于此。美国市场已日趋饱和。如果沃尔玛在占其国际卖场面积四分之一的墨西哥市场遇到法律问题，造成高额损失并妨碍了增长，那么中国（第5大市场）和巴西（第10大市场）等发展中市场是否也可能传来坏消息？非洲和印度等新市场是否将会增长缓慢？这2400万美元可能证明是一个意义非常重大的小数字。
（责任编辑:admin）
