Alright, it has been too long. I have sat and watched many of you post great articles over the past several weeks and needed to get back in the fray. I tend to try to find articles that not only have meaning to the class but also to me. With pallets, I was a fork lift operator staring them down daily.  The article I share with you all today also brings back some fond (and not so fond) memories.  I was working at Commerce Capital Markets (the securities arm of Commerce Bank) when Toronto-Dominion acquired us in 2007.

I learned quickly of the Canadian Bank structure. Unlike here in the US where it seems a new bank opens daily, the Canadian Banking market is an oligopoly with several banks dominating the market share. Many of these banks looked to the US to drive higher revenues as they were limited in the current Canadian market.

From the article attached, it seems that, although making some decent returns, the Canadian invasion hasn’t been a home run move.  While the Canadians are nice people, they weren’t too nice to our municipal finance group. We had around 50 people working there at the time of acquisition. When I finally left in 2012, there were only 3 of us left.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/us-business/rolling-at-home-canadas-banks-find-headwinds-in-us/article18940306/

I am Greg LiCalzi, a member of EMBA 32. Two of my high school summers were spent in the beverage industry. One was at beer/soda retail distributor and the other was at a wholesale beverage distributor. I did many of the typical jobs you would expect; stocking shelves, making deliveries, and unloading incoming deliveries.

To unload the deliveries, I would drive a fork lift and pull out a neatly packed stack of cans or bottles. The stack was organized on top of a pallet which was this wood base contraption that allowed room for the two prongs of the forklift to easily transport and stack. The pallet was the centerpiece to all things delivery. All incoming deliveries came in on a pallet. We would use the same pallet to pack up new deliveries to go out. FInally, the pallets would get picked up to start the process all over again.

Fast forward 15 years and I haven’t had one thought about these pallets until I read an amazing article in Cabinet Magazine about the business of pallets. It was surprising how large of a business it is with one of the largest manufacturers based in Australia. It put the global economic environment into perspective. These largely ignored pallets (by us common folk) make up a whole market with competition, lawsuits, and hostility to match any other business in technology, pharma, or healthcare.

Happy reading!

http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/52/hodes.php