With Comet gone into liquidation recently I was thinking of other big names which have collapsed over the years. The names which come to mind are :
Pan AM - The icon American airlines went bust in 1991
Enron - as a result of one of the biggest company frauds of the recent years. It was valued at around $90 billion and the seventh largest company in USA. Mismanagement at its worst.
Polaroid - One of the biggest names in cameras in 70’s and 80’s, failed to move with the times and eventually went bankrupt in 2005.
Bre-x Minerals - was a tiny mining company based in Calgary with stock worth under $1 when they announced they had found extensive deposits of Gold in Busang, Indonesia. As a result, their stock shot to almost $300 CAD a share. A series of strange events, including a man fallen from a helicopter and eaten by tigers, roused enough suspicion to unravel the fraud. An outside analysis of the sites samples revealed that Bre-X had faked their findings by “salting” samples with gold dust. Within weeks, the NASDAQ and TSX delisted the company, which at one point held a market cap of $4.4 billion. Bre-X Minerals slunk into history as a major business failure.
Woolworths - One of the leading retail store of 70’s and 80-'s with presence on virtually all the high streets of major towns. after nearly 100 years it went bankrupt in 2009 and closed its 807 stores.
Unfortunately with the current economic conditions worldwide I think there are a few more big names to fall in the months and years ahead.
It is natural for companies to fail and even large companies to fail. There is a difference between failing because you do not understand your market or do not change with it, or reinvent yourself and fraud like with Enron.
^ True in my opening post you can safely say that companies like Comet, Polaroid and Woolworth failed because they failed to keep up with changing times and technology, while Enron and Bre X failed due to fraud. The fallout from Enron was quite severe as other big companies like Arthur Anderson went with it.
^ along same lines most US Airline companies in and out of. Bankruptcy.
Lehman brothers
AIG survived barely
Lyondell chemicals
Circuit city
Kmart - bought by sears later
JDSU - survived after > 90% drop
Gateway
Hovnanian enterprise barely survived
Nokia barELY
RIM
^ yes who can forget Lehman brothers. Global financial company which went into liquidation in 2008 trigerring the financial crisis worldwide. It was US fourth largest investment bank. One bankruptcy which had worldwide impact and the aftershocks are still being felt.
^ yes who can forget Lehman brothers. Global financial company which went into liquidation in 2008 trigerring the financial crisis worldwide. It was US fourth largest investment bank. One bankruptcy which had worldwide impact and the aftershocks are still being felt.
Recently read about another investment bank that can be partly held responsible for Asian financial crisis, Peregrine Investments Holdings. One thing common in these crises is the recklessness along with lax risk management frameworks. And of course the herd mentality.
Recently read about another investment bank that can be partly held responsible for Asian financial crisis, Peregrine Investments Holdings. One thing common in these crises is the recklessness along with lax risk management frameworks. And of course the herd mentality.
Agreed. The bank management and system are equally to blame. Three banks went down or suffered huge losses due to rogue traders. The question is how can a company's system allow one employee to gamble away billions of $ without any checks and balances.
Agreed. The bank management and system are equally to blame. Three banks went down or suffered huge losses due to rogue traders. The question is how can a company's system allow one employee to gamble away billions of $ without any checks and balances.
Exactly. Some of the traders are now claiming that management didn't care as long as they were making money. Interesting thing to note is that no one understood the product (complex derivatives) that well or at least the majority didn't, and were quite clueless as to the risk impacts of worst case scenarios.
I don't think Tesco will ever go bankrupt, although the UK high streets have been bit badly with a lot of big names disappearing in the last few years.