Fred Smith
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
The Brussels hub hemorrhaged money.
Planes flew mostly empty.
By 1991, FedEx posted its first quarterly loss since going public, $105 million.
International operations lost $629 million over three years.
Senior executives started fleeing.
The CFO quit.
The COO resigned.
They claimed better opportunities.
Everyone knew the truth.
The ship was sinking.
By early 1992, Smith faced reality.
FedEx couldn't make Europe work.
The retreat was brutal.
FedEx sold its European ground operations, fired 6,600 employees, and took a $254 million charge.
For a company with a no-layoff philosophy, firing thousands of employees was agonizing.
Smith explained the failure with unusual candor.
Translation, we were wrong about everything.
But Smith had learned something from all that reading.
Great leaders knew when to retreat.
He'd studied military history.