Eminent Corporations: B Format: The Rise and Fall of the Great British Brands - Softcover

Simms, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849010498 ISBN 13: 9781849010498

Publisher: Constable & Robinson, 2010

Synopsis

How much do you know about the big-name brands we live by?

Virgin, BP, Land Rover, Barclays, Cadbury's, BBC and M&S.

In our times the PLCs have been seen as giants, the backbone of commerce and society. Yet seen through a historical perspective they are vulnerable creatures, flowering only briefly. In fact, on the Fortune 500 - a roll-call of power if ever there was one - there's just one company, General Electric, which was on the list half a century ago. The rest have gone: broken, bankrupt, merged, raided for their parts. More like mayflies than megacorps. And getting more fragile all the time.

The great corporations that now dominate our lives are treated by the law courts as if they were people.They have the same rights, but unlike us they have no emotions, morals or life histories.The only corporate biographies you find are celebratory, promotional portraits with the warts left out. So, we don't really know where most great brands came from or where they are going.

This book spills the beans by telling the real life stories of some of the biggest corporate names, and finds them as dramatic, flawed and revealing as any human biography.

About this title

About the Authors

Andrew Simms is the author of several books including the bestselling Tescopoly. He is a Fellow of nef (the new economics foundation), trained at the London School of Economics and was described by New Scientist magazine as, 'a master at joined-up progressive thinking.' He is also one of the UK's leading campaigners who coined the term 'Clone Towns,' co-authored the groundbreaking Green New Deal, was one of the original organisers of the campaign to cancel poor country debt, and devised how to mark the day in the year when the world enters 'ecological debt.' Andrew witnessed first hand for more than twenty years failed international efforts to solve critical economic and environmental problems, from extreme poverty to climate change.

Andrew Simms is Policy Director of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and a board member of Greenpeace UK. He is the author of Tescopoly and writes on various issues including climate change and globalisation.

David Boyle is a fellow of NEF and the author of a series of books about history, social change and the future, including Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life, The Tyranny of Numbers and The Sum of Our Discontent. Funny Money: In search of alternative cash launched the time banks movement in the UK.

Edition details

• Publisher: Constable & Robinson
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1849010498
• ISBN 13: 9781849010498
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384