Replies to post #11687 on Koil Energy Solutions Inc. (KLNG)

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check out this information on butler:

http://www.answers.com/topic/weatherford-international-ltd

Under Eugene L. Butler, president and CEO, the company struggled to survive the bad times that closed down a number of over-extended oil service companies. To stay in business, all of them had to compete in a market demanding up to a 70 percent discount for their services. Weatherford refused to succumb to the heaviest pressures, preferring instead to downsize and stress quality goods and services over price. As a result, its sales fell off rather sharply. It withdrew from some unprofitable markets and concentrated on the Gulf Coast, particularly offshore and abroad, where the rig count held up better than it did in the United States. It also reduced its corporate headquarters from five floors to one, cut its domestic work force by 68 percent and its international work force by 39 percent, put in effect graduated, across-the-board salary cuts, and consolidated its manufacturing operations. It was reeling badly from the economic punch, but it survived. It even added some new, specialized services tailor-made to meet some of the industry's changing needs. For example, it combined services and recent technology into a new business, that of reclaiming, stacking, and maintaining pipe taken from wells for companies contracting the service.

Primarily, the company stayed on hold throughout the 1980s. In 1987, Butler revealed that at the beginning of the recession Weatherford had actively pursued a merger with one or more other companies but, for whatever reason, never found any takers. Its only choice was to contain costs by slimming down to its core business. At the same time, Butler also indicated that the company would probably sell eventually, though, he stipulated, it was not going to be given away at "recession prices."

Instead, within a few years Weatherford began an aggressive growth cycle through acquisitions and mergers that transformed it into one of the world's largest oil services companies. In fact, it had already started on that path four years before its 1995 major merger with Enterra Corporation.