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2013年教育部考试中心考研英语模拟试题 阅读理解部分汇编 六、索尼公司的管理问题 In the late 1980s, Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony Corp. , embarked on the most costly shopping expedition of his long career. A visionary who believed that Sonys future lay in the convergence of hardware and content such as music and film, Morita eventually set his sights on Columbia Pictures Entertainment, with its two studios and a vast library of movie titles and television series. In September, 1989, after months of on-again, off-again negotiations, Sony agreed to pay the inflated asking price of $3.2 billion and assume $1.6 billion in debt. What was the rationale for such a decision? According to John Nathans Sony: The Private Life, it was motivated only by senior executives desire to please the company patriarch. Even Morita, then Sonys chairman and CEO, believed that Columbias price tag, originally $35 per share, was exorbitant. In a closed-door meeting in August, 1989, details of which have never been fully revealed, he told his seven top aides, who made up the decision-making executive committee, that he was abandoning the idea of the acquisition. That would have been the end of it had Morita not voiced regret over dinner that evening with the committee members. Its too bad, he lamented, Ive always dreamed of owning a Hollywood studio. The next day, the group reconvened and promptly decided that Sony would purchase Columbia after all. In the weeks that followed, Sony upped its bid from an initial $15 to $27 a share and, by late September, made a deal that was ridiculed by industry experts. In 1994, mismanagement forced Sony to write off $2.7 billion and assume a loss of $510 million for its Hollywood experiment. | 
