Other People’s Money (1991)
The movie Other People’s Money is an interesting story about an unscrupulously corporate man known as Larry the Liquidator. He continuously is seeking for business opportunities, especially for companies on the edge of bankruptcy to take over them and made profit out of them. Larry’s the Liquidator real name is Lawrence Garfield, and he lives a luxury life with a great business in New York. Sadly, not everything is a bed full of roses, Lawrence lives a very lonely life, his only company is his computer, Carmen. One day Lawrence realizes that the company New England Wire and Cable goes up 2 points in the stock market. He decides to dig deeper this company and he finds out that this is a family business and that this business is losing money at a rapid pace. He tries to buy the whole company, but Jorgy Jorgenson who is the owner of the company refuses, as he cares for his business and his employees. Jorgy knows that Lawrence is an intrepid businessman and that he will do everything to buy his company. Nevertheless, Jorgy has an ace up his sleeve, Kate Sullivan, his stepdaughter, and a brilliant lawyer. Kate tries everything to impede Lawrence from buying New England Wire and Cable company, even love affairs, but all her efforts are worthless as at the end Lawrence ends up buying the company. However, at the end an innovative turnaround takes the company back to a competitive advantage.
From my perspective, the most interesting part of the movie is almost at the end, when Jorgy and Lawrence give their speeches to all the stakeholders of the company. In these speeches two different approaches about business are mentioned. Jorgy expresses a more traditional and conservative business mindset, he mentions that New England Wire and Cable company has been a family business for many years and that they consider their employees like family. Also, he promises that he will keep the business afloat if the markets get better; he gives hope to them because his business is debt-free. On the other side, Lawrence speech was all about progress and innovate-or-die type of mindset. He states that wires and cables is not something that the market demands anymore, making the stockholders to realize that they are investing in a shrinking market. He mentions how New England Wire and Cable company is sinking in its own tomb, and he persuades stockholder of rescind investments and invest somewhere else. I have to admit that I was disappointed with the outcome of the voting from the stockholders who voted to rescind their investments from the company, but at the end, I liked the new future of the company.
From the entrepreneurship in relation to the society perspective, I take away from this movie that is hard to move forward and make a change. I realize that Jorgy as an entrepreneur, valued and treasured his company until the very last moment. However, he wasn’t going to be able to sustain it and he wasn’t looking for innovative solutions for the future of his business either, he tried to stay in the same path. On the other hand, Lawrence understood and tried to present a business concept, ‘creative destruction’, from Schumpeter, which it is exactly what the company New England Wire and Cable is experiencing. As their product has no longer demand on the market, the company is experiencing money lost. This is the main point of Lawrence’s speech almost at the end of the movie. He mentions how fiber optics and new technologies are taking over the market. At the end, Jorgy looses his company for refusing to a change. Nevertheless, at the very end Kate finds a new market for Jorgy’s new company the future ahead looks bright. To sum up, this is the reality of the market if a company is selling a product or a service that is becoming obsolete this company needs to prepare to either pivot to something else, innovate their current product or go bankrupt.