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曾经世界最大的服装零售商H&M正经历着艰难的时期。销售业绩下滑、营业利润率不断缩水，让这家创立于1947年的家族企业吃尽苦头。该怎样走出困境？或许H&M需要从其他家族企业的管理中获取灵感。
测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
peril ['perəl] n. 危险，冒险
exploit [ɪk'splɔɪt] v. 开发；利用
disdain [dɪs'deɪn] v. 蔑视
purveyor [pə'veɪə（r）] n. 承办者，散播者
阅读马上开始，建议您计算一下阅读整篇文章所用的时间，对照下方的参考值就可以评估出您的英文阅读水平。
Talk to family-controlled companies and two words are likely to be uttered more than any other: long term. Family businesses like to portray themselves as an antidote to the supposedly short-termist tendencies of listed groups. They say they focus on the future and the mythical long term.
Clothing retailer H&M illustrates the perils of such a claim. The favourite phrase of chief executive Karl-Johan Persson — whose grandfather founded the purveyor of fast fashion and whose father is chairman of H&M — is “healthy, long-term growth”.
Sadly, that is the last thing the Swedish company has been providing recently. Sales in the fourth quarter of its year — until the end of November — fell by 4 per cent, the first such decline in decades. Its share price is half the level of its 2015 peak. H&M's operating profit margin, which was 23.5 per cent in 2007, is now just 9.6 per cent. That is roughly half the level of Inditex, the Spanish owner of the Zara brand which overtook H&M six years ago as the world's largest fashion retailer.
The Swedish group is being squeezed from all sides. The biggest and best-known threat is the internet. Fewer customers are visiting H&M stores. Even though the company became an early provider of online shopping in 1998, it failed to exploit its advantage and has since been outflanked by internet-only retailers.
H&M is also being hit by cheaper clothes retailers. Société Générale analysts estimate that a basket of nine standard products costs half as much at the British chain Primark as at H&M. Some investors now fear that the Swedish retailer is stuck in an “in-between” position, and needs radical change.
That is where the family and long term come in again. Stefan Persson, Karl-Johan's father, owns 71 per cent of H&M's voting rights and his sister is the next biggest shareholder, with 3 per cent.
“We have the right chief executive,” Stefan Persson told a Swedish newspaper last week after the sales decline pushed the share price to an eight-year low.
Much now hangs on H&M's first ever investor day, in February. Previously, the group had disdained such meetings. But with questions swirling over the company's strategy and whether it will have to cut its dividend — its profits this year are all but certain not to cover it — the company is being forced to be more open.
In the background lurks the question over whether the Persson family's long-term focus is stopping it from taking the necessary short-term decisions. H&M has started closing down stores but many high streets the world over boast several of its shops within spitting distance of one another. As Karl-Johan Persson told the Financial Times earlier this year: “For us, even though we are listed with all the pressures we have — it's important to do well in the short term as well — we have always prioritised the long term if the two are in conflict.”
If the Perssons look across Stockholm, they can see one of Europe's most successful and long-term family business empires: the Wallenbergs. Owners of stakes in businesses as varied as Ericsson, SEB, Electrolux and Nasdaq, the Wallenbergs also like to talk about the long term. But they have also shown they are not afraid of making radical decisions. In recent decades, they have sold truckmaker Scania to Volkswagen and stock exchange OMX to Nasdaq. They helped create AstraZeneca and ABB through mergers. Furthermore, they have tried to anticipate threats to their businesses and invested — through their foundations — billions of krone in general research into artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and quantum technology.
Jacob Wallenberg, part of the family's fifth generation, said in a recent interview that the family relied on outsiders: “Maybe people are the single most important ingredient in what we're working with. We can't do everything ourselves. We're dependent on a great group of people that we work very closely with — CEOs, chairmen, board members, etc”.
As the Perssons plot H&M's next step, it is a message worth pondering. Outside investors will be hoping the family not only considers the long term but also makes the necessary tough decisions to shore up the business in the short term as well.
请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：
A.H&M's operating profit margin is half the level of its 2015 peak.
B.H&M was the world's largest fashion retailer until six years ago.
C.H&M's sales in the fourth quarter fell for the first time in decades.
D.H&M's operating profit margin is half the level of its opponent Zara.
答案 (1)
A.H&M failed to exploit its advantage in online retailing.
B.Customers largely prefer to visit H&M stores.
C.H&M doesn't prepare itself for the internet age.
D.Internet-only products costs half as much as H&M.
答案 (2)
A.They decided to cut its dividend.
B.They held a investor day meeting.
C.They started closing down stores.
D.They started taking short-term decisions.
答案 (3)
A.The right chief executive.
B.The courage to make radical decisions.
C.The fixation on the the long term.
D.A great group of board members.
答案 (4)
(1) 答案：B.H&M was the world's largest fashion retailer until six years ago.解释：H＆M的营业利润率几乎只有Inditex的一半。Inditex旗下的品牌Zara六年前超越H&M成为世界上最大的时尚零售商。
(2) 答案：A.H&M failed to exploit its advantage in online retailing.解释：尽管H＆M早在1998年就开始提供线上购物服务，但他们并没能发挥自己的优势，以至于被线上零售商抢走风头。
(3) 答案：C.They started closing down stores.解释：H＆M已经开始减少门店，但世界各地的许多街道上，H&M的门店依然比邻而居。
(4) 答案：B.The courage to make radical decisions.解释：瓦伦贝格也喜欢强调长远的利益，但他们同样敢于做出激进的决定。