> Us steel had a 120 year run without being toppled.
Um, no? It didn't magically go from 67% to 8% in the year 2001. It had already declined. In fact, it started to decline quickly: "Because of heavy debts taken on at the company's formation—Carnegie insisted on being paid in gold bonds for his stake—and fears of antitrust litigation, U.S. Steel moved cautiously. Competitors often innovated faster, especially Bethlehem Steel, run by Charles Schwab, U.S. Steel's former president. U.S. Steel's share of the expanding market slipped to 50 percent by 1911."
> It didn't magically go from 67% to 8% in the year 2001.
In fact, it never did that. It went from x million pounds of production to 1.08*x million pounds of production. It also went from 67% domestic market share to y% domestic market share.
Gluing a couple sources together it looks like US domestic steel production was worth $90 billion in 2020 and U.S. Steel has a revenue of $21 billion in 2021. That said, this is a volatile market and 2021 had 20-30% higher sales than 2020 and 2022.
"Company lifespan" is a stupid metric. Any given company can hold on as best it can or be driven into the ground in a few years, depending on what management and the board does with it. There's no rule in business that says "oh, too old, time for you to go out of business now."
I agree, that's why I think it was a stupid metric for the author to use as the basis of their article. It doesn't matter if average F500 company age is increasing when the average time on the f500 is decreasing.
This is all beside the fact that company age itself is meaningless when you have a history full of mergers, acquisitions, and even reverse mergers or takeovers.
Um, no? It didn't magically go from 67% to 8% in the year 2001. It had already declined. In fact, it started to decline quickly: "Because of heavy debts taken on at the company's formation—Carnegie insisted on being paid in gold bonds for his stake—and fears of antitrust litigation, U.S. Steel moved cautiously. Competitors often innovated faster, especially Bethlehem Steel, run by Charles Schwab, U.S. Steel's former president. U.S. Steel's share of the expanding market slipped to 50 percent by 1911."