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Quite apart from any awkwardness in the way he handled the hostile bid by rival Oracle for the firm he was running, Craig Conway seems to have been an unpopular CEO of PeopleSoft, a large enterprise-software company. Three managers who reported directly to him were apparently close to resigning in frustration, and the board was unhappy about "mis-statements" he made to analysts. So even though there was no "smoking gun", as the board put it, Mr. Conway was fired on October 1st and replaced by the firm’s founder, David Duffield.
Mr. Duffield’s brief is now to address Mr. Conway’s perceived shortcomings and his obsession with fending off the $ 7.7 billion takeover bid from Oracle. At the same time, says Paul Hamerman of Forrester, a research firm, Mr. Conway offered no compelling technological vision for PeopleSoft, and seemed deaf to "quite a noise level of customer complaints". Mr. Conway’s firing
A. is hard to resist.
B. is not given first priority.
C. depends on its validity.
D. is irrational.
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It was inevitable that any of President George W. Bushes fans had to be very disappointed by his decision to implement high tariffs on steel imported to the U. S.. The president’s defense was pathetic: He argued that the steel tariffs were somehow consistent with free trade, that the domestic industry was important and struggling, and that the relief was a temporary measure to allow time for restructuring. One reason that this argument is absurd is that U. S. integrated steel companies ("Big Steel") have received various forms of government protection and subsidy for more than 30 years.
Instead of encouraging the industry to restructure, the long-term protection has sustained inefficient companies and cost U. S. consumers dearly. As Anne O. Krueger, now deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said in a report on Big Steel: "The American Big Steel industry has been the champion lobbyist and seeker of protectio
A. the sacrifice from U. S. consumers.
B. the government's financial support.
C. the reduction of steel product prices.
D. the compromise from the labor force.
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