Y2K Disaster or Opportunities ?
From Dec. 20, 99 WSJ Article by Alec Klein
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The consensus is the world will avert a catastrophe when the clock rolls over to Jan. 1. By year's end, more than $1 trillion will have been spent globally by governments, companies and others to make sure computers and microchips recognize "00" to mean the year 2000, not 1900.
But Mr. Grabow, a former Morgan Stanley Dean Witter portfolio manager who now has his own firm, is one of the few prognosticators out there still predicting a haywire year 2000.
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Mr. Grabow is telling his clients that for all the Y2K remediation, companies are still unprepared. He says there are just too many electronic chips embedded in equipment all over the world that haven't been found and fixed.
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Not Mr. Grabow. He says he was startled to learn that Motorola's own Web site (www.motorola.com) lists dozens of its semiconductor products that are not Y2K ready, which is indeed true. The company says less than one-tenth of 1% of its estimated 100,000 chip products are non-Y2K compliant. The buggy chips -- Motorola declines to say how many copies are out there -- are used to count time in such things as personal computers, washing machines, video-cassette players, toasters and air conditioners. Motorola spokesman Jeff Hahn says the company has spent about $230 million on Y2K fixes and "we've done just about everything we can" at this point.
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Auto makers, including Ford, will fall victim to ill-prepared suppliers, he contends. In conversations with companies that sell Ford parts, he says he has learned that many have yet to fix all of their embedded chips. He also alleges that auto makers haven't rigorously verified their suppliers' Y2K tests. He sees a logjam in the supply chain that could hobble Ford and cut into sales.
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