WalMart is cancer in our free society.You have a monopoly that can ruin our money system anytime.Why do you choose to sell only certain products?Why have you left most hardware products off the shelfs?Why don't you pay a liveable wage?Why don;t you share your corporate profits with your employees who earn them?Hurry up WalMart take all the money so we can end this game of monopoly and you will be through.
Sajjad Hussain
/
AFP-Getty Images
THE GLOBAL ELITE
26: Mike Duke
CEO-Designate, Wal-Mart Stores
Published Dec 20, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Jan 5, 2009
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As panicked consumers holster their credit cards, at least one company is benefiting: Wal-Mart Stores. Its sales were up 7.6 percent through November; its stock will likely be a rare one that finishes 2008 with a gain. And on Feb. 1, longtime CEO Lee Scott will step aside. His successor: Mike Duke, 58, a former department-store executive and logistics expert who's been at Wal-Mart for 13 years, most recently running its international operations.
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Duke takes control of the world's largest retailer at a key moment. Wal-Mart spent the early 2000s fending off complaints over what critics see as a business built on low wages, poor benefits and antiunion activism. The company responded with an aggressive PR campaign, better marketing (its ads now emphasize how its low prices help families save money) and real innovations. It launched a program to sell prescriptions for $4, and it has devised environmental and energy initiatives that have won praise from outfits like Conservation International. "Wal-Mart has overcome [the criticism] by positioning itself as one of the solutions to the nation's problems," says Bernard Sosnick, an analyst with Gilford Securities. "Duke needs to keep the momentum going."
When it comes to sales, much of the momentum will come from overseas. With 4,249 U.S. stores, Wal-Mart has few parts of America left to conquer. Its future growth will depend on penetrating markets like China, which currently has just 215 Wal-Mart locations. Given Duke's international experience, investors will be betting that the new CEO can turn "everyday low prices" into a concept that needs no translation.
No. 25: Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan
COVER STORY: THE GLOBAL ELITE
The study of power is not only diverting (which Homer and Shakespeare knew), but illuminating. A biography of an ancient human impulse.
© 2009
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