Bombardier Inc. is a diversified manufacturing and services company. The company manufactures business jets, regional aircraft, rail transportation equipment and motorized recreational products. It also provides financial services and asset management in business areas aligned with its core competencies. The Corporation has a workforce of some 80,000 people in 24 countries throughout the Americas, Europe and Asian-Pacific region. Headquarters are in Montréal, Canada. Revenues for the fiscal year ended Jan. 1, 2002 and stood at $21.6 billion Cdn. Bombardier trades on the Toronto, Brussels and Frankfurt stock exchanges (BBD, BOM and BBDd.F).
The external environmental factors that impact the company presently and in the future are economic, social, political, technological and environmental. These may be interrelated and dependent. Following is a discussion of the external environmental factors that have an impact on Bombardier Ltd.
In America, during the 1980s, sales for the cyclical market of business, regional and amphibious aircrafts grew industry-wide. As the industry moved into the early 1990s growth slowed and the market matured as prices came down and the economy went entered a recession. During periods when the economic climate is below expectations, consumer confidence and spending are low, retail sales decline reducing earnings and profits, industrial production drops, the US GDP growth rate falls to low levels, corporate spending slows, and layoffs occur. During the middle to late 1990s there was a growth period. The pattern repeated itself, however, during the last three months of 2000 when, among other factors, the United States began to exhibit the same recessionary symptoms as it did when the growth rate in the US GDP fell to its lowest level in five and a half years and companies reported poor earnings (the worst quarter for corporate earnings since 1998).
In Quebec, Canada, during the 1980s ...