If you are a first time visitor, please check our latest posts and the categories for more interesting information. You may sign up for free updates by RSS or E-mail. Thanks for visiting!
Fortune Magazine published a list of 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for 2007.
“Ah, what a dumb year it was! Fortune chose the absolutely dumbest of the dumb that the gods of fate and humor delivered into our laps - and yours - this past year.”
Compiled by the Editors of “Fortune”
The editors came up with an epigraph for each listing, which reflects the reason the company or an individual is featured on this embarassing list.
1.The epigraph on No.1 is: “The bad news is that 2008 is the Year of the Rat.”
It’s like suggesting, that next year will be even worse…
Then, they proceed with listing misfortunes, which happened in the year of the Pig for businesses, connected to China:
* “Pet food makers recall more than 60 million cans of food laced with tainted melamine in wheat gluten from China.”
* Mattel recalling almost 20 million items made in China because of lead paint on toy cars and magnets. Lead problems also in 844,000 Chinese-made Barbie accessories and toys with the Sesame Street brand.
* Nike recalls 235,000 football helmets because the Chinese-made chin cup has a defective strap and has caused at least two concussions and a broken nose.
2. “Eli Lilly wins FDA approval to put Prozac into beef-flavored pills to treat separation anxiety in dogs.”
3.Leona Helmsley, who upon her death left $12million to her dog.
“Don’t laugh - if she were your master, you’d need a lifetime supply of Prozac too”.
4.Merrill Lynch - “Mission Accomplished”
“In the first quarter of 2007, thanks to its $1.3 billion purchase of First Franklin Financial, Merrill Lynch becomes the world’s top underwriter of subprime-mortgage-backed securities. Nonetheless, with the market in meltdown just a few months later, Merrill CFO Jeffrey Edwards (pictured) tells analysts that the firm’s subprime exposure is “limited, contained, and appropriately marked.” In October, Merrill announces a quarterly loss of $2.24 billion after $7.9 billion in subprime-related write-downs.”
5.”Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal squeezes in 20 rounds of golf, including three rounds on three different courses in a single day. In October, O’Neal announces his “retirement,” walking away with a compensation package valued at $161.5 million.”
6. “Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince resigns after the company takes an $11 billion write-down.”
7. “Japanese manufacturer Toto apologizes to customers and offers free repairs for 180,000 high-tech toilets - thrones that feature heated seats, air purifiers, blow dryers, and water sprayers - after at least three catch fire.”
9. “The French daily Le Monde calls Ratatouille, Pixar’s movie about a rat in a kitchen, “one of the greatest gastronomic films in the history of cinema.”
17. “After receiving a warning from the FDA, Redux Beverages agrees to stop calling its energy drink Cocaine. It changes the name first to Censored, then to NoName.”
21. “Turner Broadcasting’s Cartoon Network places electronic lightboards throughout Boston, triggering a bomb scare that shuts down two bridges, an expressway, a subway station, and a stretch of the Charles River. The devices depict a character from the show saluting passersby with an upraised middle finger.”
30. “..CEO James Cayne spends ten of 21 workdays out of the office, playing golf and competing in a bridge tournament in Tennessee…”
31. “In March, shortly after No. 2 U.S. subprime lender New Century Financial announces a major earnings restatement as a result of failing loans, Bear Stearns analysts Scott Coren and Michael Nannizzi write a research note on New Century. They argue that despite New Century’s stock having plunged 50%, to $15 per share, its downside risk is no worse than $10 in a “rescue-sale scenario.” Within a month, New Century drops below $1 a share, is suspended by the NYSE, and files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.”
32. “Rapper Jay-Z, founder of the Rocawear clothing line, is taken to task by the Humane Society after it finds that the “faux fur” in jackets sold by his company is actually dog fur.”
37. “District of Columbia judge Roy Pearson loses a $54 million lawsuit against the owners of a dry-cleaning establishment that he claims misplaced a pair of his pants…Four months later a judicial review committee votes against reappointing him to his post…”
38. “Are you a moron? Click here now!
To test Google’s ability to block harmful advertising, Belgian IT security consultant Didier Stevens posts an ad that reads “Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!” It is accepted by Google and displayed 259,723 times; 409 web surfers actually click on the ad.”
39. “British artist Damien Hirst, famous for such works as a tiger shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde, creates the most expensive piece of contemporary art in history: a platinum human skull covered with 8,601 diamonds. Called “For the Love of God,” the piece is reportedly sold to an unnamed investment group for $100 million.”
43. Cerendipity 3. “Just one week after unveiling the world’s most expensive dessert - the $25,000 Frrozen Haute Chocolate, 28 cocoas infused with edible 23-karat gold served in a goblet with a diamond bracelet at its base - New York restaurant Serendipity 3 is shut down for failing its second health inspection in a month. Inspectors find a live mouse, multiple piles of mouse droppings, fruit flies, houseflies, and more than 100 live cockroaches.”
49. “A worker in a German screw factory smuggles out 2,000 to 7,000 screws per night, ultimately stealing more than a million units. He sells the screws below cost on the Internet, artificially depressing the entire screw market.”
50. “Exploiting a flaw in a Defense Department purchasing system, South Carolina parts supplier C&D Distributors rakes in $20.5 million in shipping fees on just $68,000 in sales. The scheme is finally detected when a Pentagon clerk spots a $969,000 bill for shipping two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas.”
55. “MIT sues architect Frank Gehry, alleging that flaws in his design of the school’s $300 million Stata Center - which Gehry himself once described as looking “like a party of drunken robots got together to celebrate” - resulted in problems including cracks, leaks, and mold.”
56. “Chrysler pulls an online ad in which a dog urinating on its four-wheel-drive Dodge Nitro gets electrocuted and goes up in flames, followed by the tagline “Charged with adrenaline.”
64. “Spain’s National Institute of Statistics adds plastic surgery procedures such as breast augmentation and nose jobs to the basket of goods and services it uses to calculate the nation’s consumer price index, while excluding the cost of garment fabric, upholstery, and home-appliance repairs.”
67. “McDonald’s launches a “word battle” against the Oxford English Dictionary to amend the definition of McJobs, which the OED currently describes as an “unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects.” The goal, according to a company vice president, is to change the citation to “reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding, and offers skills that last a lifetime.”
68. “Illinois-based RC2 Corp., maker of Thomas the Tank Engine toys, recalls 1.5 million of the wooden trains because of excessive levels of lead in their paint (see Mattel). Consumers who return the tainted toys are then sent free boxcars, some of which are recalled three months later for the same reason.”
74. “As thousands of eBay’s biggest sellers gather in Boston for a convention sponsored by the auction site, Google invites them to a party promoting Google Checkout, a payment system that competes with eBay’s PayPal. In response eBay, the single largest buyer of search ads on Google, “tests” a shift of its marketing dollars, pulling all its U.S. ads from the search engine for more than a week. Google cancels its party.”
76. “Jessica Simpson stars in commercials for Pizza Hut’s Cheesy Bites pizza, then tells Elle magazine that she’s allergic to wheat … and tomatoes … and cheese.”
77. “Two weeks before April 15, the Department of Justice files suit to shut down more than 125 franchised offices of Jackson Hewitt, the nation’s second-largest tax preparer. The DoJ alleges that the franchisee had engaged in a “massive series of tax-fraud schemes” costing the government more than $70 million.
In one instance, a Chicago barber declaring $14,000 in earnings claimed a fuel-tax credit for $50,000 of gasoline, which the DoJ says would “require him to drive 1,370 miles each day, seven days a week … leaving little if any time to cut hair.”
80. “After Hugo Chávez calls the former Prime Minister of Spain a “fascist” at a summit in Chile, Spanish King Juan Carlos leaps to his countryman’s defense. His retort to Chavez, “Why don’t you shut up?” becomes one of the nation’s most popular cellphone ringtones, downloaded more than 500,000 times within ten days.”.
81. “On July 24, San Francisco data-center operator 365 Main issues a press release touting its 24/7 reliability: “In the unlikely event of a cut to a primary power feed, the state-of-the-art electrical system instantly switches to live backup generators, keeping the data center continuously running.” That day a power outage hits and three of its backup generators fail, taking down high-profile customers including RedEnvelope, Technorati, and Craigslist.”
84. “A Southwest Airlines gate agent tells Kyla Ebbert - a 23-year-old college student and Hooters waitress wearing a denim miniskirt, high-heeled sandals, and a sweater over a tank top - that she’s dressed too provocatively to be allowed on a flight from San Diego to Tucson. Though the agent ultimately relents and lets her onboard, an indignant Ebbert goes public, appearing on the Today show. Southwest takes a massive publicity hit; Ebbert is hired by Richard Branson to promote rival low-cost carrier Virgin America and by Playboy to pose for a pictorial.”
93. “On a British Airways flight from New Delhi to London, first-class passenger Paul Trinder wakes up from a nap to find the corpse of a woman who had died in the economy cabin being placed in the seat next to him. Upon complaining about the incident, Trinder - a gold-level frequent flier who logs 200,000 miles a year with the airline - says he is told he will not be compensated and should just “get over it.”
96. “Soon after the launch of WikiScanner - a website that links the editing of entries on Wikipedia with the computer networks where the changes were made - users uncover some newsworthy revisions: A Washington Post employee is found to have changed a reference to the owner of a rival paper from Philip Anschutz to Charles Manson, while someone at The New York Times added the word “jerk” 12 times to the entry on George W. Bush.”
97. “Google’s Blogger software misidentifies a company-written blog as spam and automatically disables it.”
99. “”There is a lot of bad news, but this is still the second-or third-strongest year historically over the past 30 to 40 years, and it is still a very strong, vibrant market.” — Bev Thorne, senior vice-president of marketing for Century 21, on the outlook for real estate in 2007.”
100. ” Apparently he missed the memo from Bev
“I don’t want to be too sophisticated here, but ‘07 is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year.” — Donald Tomnitz, CEO of homebuilder D.R. Horton, on the outlook for real estate in 2007.”
I showed only some of 101 moments. For the full text and pictures, see original article at: Money.CNN.com
