There has been a massive overhang on 3M (NYSE: MMM) for several years from legal, regulatory, and corporate issues. Those are slowly being worked through, which is good news.
However, investors have to decide whether 3M today is the same as what 3M used to be. The answer is likely to be no; it isn't.
There has been a series of problems facing 3M, and they all seemed to hit at one time. First, there were legal issues surrounding product liability because of earplugs the industrial company sold to the military.
Source Fool.com