Drywall Maker in Pain as Housing Suffers
Many in the construction industry have struggled as the housing market has slowed dramatically in recent times.
But few have felt it as forcefully or as suddenly as the USG Corporation, the nation’s largest maker of drywall, the paper-wrapped plaster boards used to build walls in homes and offices.
USG, based here in Chicago, is in some ways a throwback to earlier times, when far larger swaths of the economy were unprotected against the brutal ups and downs of the business cycle. From banking to warehousing, modern managers have expanded nationally and globally, to minimize the impact of a downturn in any one region, and employed tactics like hedging and outsourcing to reduce risk and lower costs.
7 August 2007 | Business, Construction, General | Comments
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