I've noticed this in my many years here. When all the companies are rewarding their employees with sizable raises and bonuses, HON management is ignoring it. When all the companies start laying off people, HON is the first to follow suit. Then the management is shocked when the attrition intensifies. I wonder what could be the reason...
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@2arw
I wouldn't be surprised that Honeywell needs to keep that kind of cash reserve because of possible legal obligations due to various lawsuits. Either current or perceived future lawsuits. 8 billion would go a long way towards developing new technologies and products. But then again, they've either let go or not kept the minds that could do that.
Depending on how everything pans out they may get that cash from employees in multiple ways... one is the long squeeze and ultimate RIF as an employee and the other might be a bailout package that has been paid for by ... you guessed it ... the employee (middle class) through taxes. How else will they be able to pay salary/bonuses for the bloated and useless leadership team?
@2ofv, it does appear that way on the surface, until you drill down in their annual report and see that they are in fact sitting on $8B (yes billion) in cash reserves. They are just cheap because they want to be cheap.
Now this is the truth.
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The simple answer is, is that Honeywell is not solvent. There seems to be no reserves available to handle a downturn. Unless you count the employees value and what can be extracted from them. When Honeywell needs cash, and they can't get it through innovation and development, that take it from the employees.
HON has played "follow the leader" for its business strategies for decades now, ever since "Neutron Jack" Welch adopted scorched-earth policies toward cost cutting. Reduce the supplier base, eliminate incoming parts inspection, cut staff to below critical mass, and offshore manufacturing to Asia, China in particular. But as businesses moved past the Welch legacy policies, HON leadership failed to recognize that those strategies need to be revisited if not outright abandoned. And GE today is but a glimmer of its former self in terms of market capitalization, penetration, and esteem. Quick - can anyone even name today's CEO of GE? I didn't think so! Yet good ol' HON appears to be content to pursue dated strategies which more closely resemble rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic than charting an accurate course through troubled waters.
Correct. Where I disagree with you slightly is the word "ignoring it". Oh, trust me, THEY SEE IT, and they understand the consequences, They just DO NOT CARE. HON management, ALL HON management, from the first level manager, second level, director, mired of VP's, Presidents, and then the kommandants (Senior Leadership, aka corporate) are all the definition or Narcissists. You literally can not get into HON management, at ANY level, if you are not a total Narcissist. True, the first level keeping you in line for your "free shower", is at a different pay scale and complicit level from the camp commander (Director), and yet another level from regional control (VP's) and yes, a little higher, state control (Presidents), and yes, SL back in Berlin is controlling multiple high functioning "Teams" and different Presidents, with their metrics all flowing in, ya know, train numbers and schedules, making sure Zyklon-B gets delivered in correct quantities and does not run out, getting all the melted gold to Swiss banks, and all the associated business of operating a complex organization. All is the goal to benefit THEM at the maximum amount. They see it, and they do not care. All narcissists and those without any empathy (the definition of a sociopath). Those that are first and second level managers for a long time, one has to ask, why they get the enjoyment running the lines to the free showers, see my point? Something deeply wrong with those people, as they are doing the dirty work, and THEY like doing the dirty work, for all the levels above them. History's saving grace is, they all get the rope. Merry Christmas.
Mad.. world...
Why would honeywell give bonuses when they hired the lowest bidder for every job in the first place?