I've always said that Adam Smith would barf at the concept of a corporation. The "free market" he envisioned consisted of buyers and sellers on more or less equal footing, not individual consumers and employees dealing with virtual persons with the power and wealth of Liechtenstein.
But he would have renounced his views on capitalism if he had foreseen the rise of the "holding company." A corporation that is not in the business of producing anything, serving customers, or contributing to the GDP, but merely of owning other corporations. To them, your industry is a board game that they will play until they get tired of it, your company is a pawn in that game that they will sacrifice if it makes business sense, and you are just a mote of dust on that pawn.
Because of the leverage of directorate pyramids, your firm may be under the effective control of an MBA who directly owns one percent of its stock and who knows nothing at all about its business.
Having made my point, I'm quick to add that "survival of the fittest" applies even at this rarefied level. There are some stunningly good holding companies who mind the business of their acquisitions wisely, care about their legions of employees, and use their leverage to help companies in trouble weather financial storms instead of tossing them to the scavengers. You'll see the names of their leaders near the top of the list of the world's richest people, giving faith that there is some justice in the universe.
Still, you don't know which kind you've got there.
On the average, many of them only track performance on a quarter-to-quarter, or even year-to-year basis. They depend on the executives of each subordinate company to keep them abreast of operational details, and executives are notorious for being out of touch with IT.
Other things being equal, I would hang on for a year and see how they react to the results of corporate policies. If things start to fall apart because of short-sighted budgeting, their response will tell you what you need to know.
Unfortunately the results may not be immediate. Things may not start to fall apart until 2009. In that case your executives need to be more proactive and explain to their new bosses that there is a future beyond next year's financial statements. The way they react to that will REALLY tell you what you need to know. Of course the way your own people deal with it may tell you something you don't want to know about them.
My company was bought by one of the "good guy" holding companies several years before I joined. It has been a sweet ride. From having been in deep trouble, we are now an industry leader and have one of the most content staffs in the country.
