WQ III:8 -- Let Us Now Praise Defunct Corporations

The Wednesday Quiz -- Season III -- Quiz 8

Now Let Us Praise Defunct Corporations

The Wednesday Quiz is a "closed-book" test of knowledge and intuition; please do not look up answers, ask others for help, or answer as a team.

Questions about the rules and the ~Fabulous Prizes~ are answered here.

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Into the heady world of finance and industry this week, as we remember ten corporate giants that had what it takes to get ahead in business -- and then didn't.

For each capsule description, name that company!

1. Easily the largest oil company in the world, it was broken up into a number of smaller companies -- including, nowadays, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips -- after the Supreme Court found it guilty of antitrust violations in 1911.

2. A major automobile manufacturer based in South Bend, Indiana, it went out of business in 1967.

3. Based in New York, it was one of the leading and most prestigious airlines in the world from the 1930s until shortly before its collapse in 1991.

4. The Sperry and Hutchinson company, a remnant of which technically still exists, ran an extremely popular program that, by some estimates, 80% of American households were participating in during the 1960s. The popularity of the program plunged after the 1970s. What, in two words, was the Sperry and Hutchinson product?

5. Famous for its lunch counters, this discount retail giant was the largest department store chain in the world as late as 1979. It went out of business in 1997, although its corporate sucessor still operates The Foot Locker chain of shoe stores.

6. One of the most prominent of many flash-in-the-pan internet-based companies of the late 1990s, this pet food and supply company raised $82.5 million dollers in a February 2000 stock offering before entering bankruptcy in November, um, 2000.

7. An energy and natural resources company based in Houston, Texas, sustained largely by a corporate culture of fraud, corruption, and predation, it went out of business in 2001.

8. A Chicago-based catalog merchandise and department store chain, at one time a leading U.S. retailer and the principal competitor to Sears, Roebuck and Co. It closed its catalog business in 1985, and closed its last store in 2001.

9. A New York-based investment bank and brokerage, it became well known to the general public after its initially very profitable trade in securitizing high-risk mortgages became suddenly very unprofitable. It collapsed and was essentially given to a competitor, JP Morgan Chase, in 2008.

10. A Richmond, Virginia company, it was one of the largest electronics retailers in the United States right up to its bankruptcy in 2008 and subsequent dismantling in 2009.

Submit your answers in the comments!