Price Waterhouse Changes Name

Computergram International, June 2, 1998

Changing the company name is becoming something of a fad. First came Borland Corp, which traded its well-known Celtic brand for the insipid Inprise (CI No 3,401). Then last week, Ichat settled for the equally banal Acuity (CI No 3421). The latest new name is, however, by far the most uninspired. Working through its merger with Coopers & Lybrand, Price Waterhouse today announced that the moniker for the new joint firm will be PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Fairly rolls off the tongue, no? As one PW employee obeserved: "Look at all those letters without a space! The Germans will love it." Worse even than the ugly portmanteau is the new logo, in which the letters of Waterhouse wobble above and below the line on which Price and Coopers rest. As our old business school professor used to say: "If you can't think of anything useful to do, order some new stationery."