Corporate Y2K costs soaring - BusinessWeek

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Major U.S. corporations and experts are hastily beefing up their projections of how much it will cost to adjust computers to cope with the millennium change less than 13 months away, according to a feature story in the December 14 issue of BusinessWeek. Technology consulting firm Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn., warns the global cost could hit a whopping $1 trillion, $600 billion in pre-year-2000 costs and the rest coming after the big event, the article said. From an investment prospective, many corporations now say that, to fix the problem, they will have to spend about 26 percent more than they thought just a few months ago, the article said.

For example, AT&T early last year thought it might spend around $300 million on the problem but now the corporate giant says it could be triple that, the magazine said. Among others, Chase Manhattan Corp. raised its estimate 21 percent to $363 million, the article noted.

"Now, companies are testing repairs and finding that some don't work properly," the article said. "And with less than 400 days to go, some are saying they can't make all their fixes on time and will have to find ways to do business, regardless," the article said

-- John Callon (jcallon@gate.net), December 04, 1998

Answers

Its starting .....

Watch for the impact of these on the individual stock prices. If people notice (which may or may not happen) it could drive the whole index down, or "kill" specific stocks "not compliant and not going to be", or promote individual stocks "spending to be compliant, and expect to be compliant".

Or the herd might panic and sell everything - regardless of which company is compliant or not - at which case there could be bargains in compliant companies.

Regardless - if money is NOT being spent by company "abcdef" - the problem is NOT being solved at company "abcdef".

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 04, 1998.