[Swizec]

25 years? Aren't there public companies still very alive and kicking that were founded before ww2? Whose stock is still pretty valuable?

Boeing comes to mind. BMW as well. General Electric maybe. Actually plenty of things in the hardware space.

[davidw]

Certainly. There are also many that no longer exist.

From a summary I wrote of "Why Most Things Fail":

Of the 100 largest industrial companies in 1912, by 1995, 29 had gone bankrupt, 48 disappeared (mergers, acquisitions and so on), and 52 survived, but only 19 remained in the top 100. Once you discount the large number of small companies that fail in their first few years, the average lifespan for small companies is similar to that of large firms - and most of them eventually fail.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000XUBDQM/?tag=dedasys-20 - although I don't know if I'd recommend buying it. It's good, but never seemed to gel 100% for me.

[Swizec]

Okay, that makes sense then. I can see how 25 years can be the expected lifespan of a public company.

However, of those 48 companies that disappeared. Aren't those essentially liquidity events resulting in a lot of money for the shareholders?

[davidw]

> However, of those 48 companies that disappeared. Aren't those essentially liquidity events resulting in a lot of money for the shareholders?

Some were probably good, others bad for the shareholders.

[hga]

IBM had a very good run, transitioning from punched card data processing to newfangled computers.

Don't know about TI's stock history, but they successfully negotiated many technology generations starting with germanium transistors.

[greenyoda]

General Electric is actually over a century old. It was founded in 1892.[1] IBM is just over a century old, founded in 1911 (under a different name, as a merger of three existing companies).[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM