David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…In fact, I think Schutz was like, let's make airplane engines. Yes, I think he was. Yes, oh, my gosh. On the back of these go-go years and success, they're selling the 911, they're selling the 920. They're selling a lot of 944s. They sold a ton of those things. The families take the company public. Just like we talked about on the LVMH episode, a lot of these European luxury brands, craftsman brands, did an IPO. They thought they were being smart. They sold, I think, a 30% stake in the company, but all non voting shares. They're like, no corporate raiders here. Nobody will have any voting control except the family's. It is impossible that somebody could attack us because the families and all of them. It would have to be somebody inside the families who would attack us. Why would that ever happen? Everything goes great. The stock doubles within the first year that it's on the market, but then in 1987, Long Term Capital Management blows it. The end of the go-go years, the 80s, not good for Porsche, and not good in a lot of senses. (a) Just pure economic climate not good for anybody. (b) You're making luxury sports cars. As we talked about in the 70s, the oil crisis in the 70s was bad for Porsche, it was really bad for the 914. The 911 was pretty robust. It was very resilient. I think the same is, again, true here at the end of the 80s, but they've still got the 928 and the 944 on the market. Those things started sucking wind big time. It's not a good situation because now you have three aged products. The economy is slowing, and your cars are not really competitive.…

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