Dolce & Gabbana's 'chopsticks' ad insulted China — and cost the brand its biggest market
A 2018 ad showing a Chinese model struggling with chopsticks sparked a national boycott. D&G was dropped by retailers and lost China for years.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDChina Evergrande piled up $300B in debt — its collapse shook China's property market
China Evergrande grew into one of China's biggest developers on a mountain of debt. In 2021 it defaulted on over $300 billion, triggering a property crisis.
Read the caseXerox PARC advanced graphical computing, but Star reached a limited market
PARC combined and advanced graphical computing in Alto; Xerox later sold Star. The mouse originated at SRI, before PARC existed.
Read the caseLance Armstrong's decade of denial cost him every sponsor and all seven Tour titles
After USADA exposed his doping, Nike, Trek, Oakley and Anheuser-Busch left within days, and all seven Tour de France titles were stripped.
Read the caseFujikura's cable test fraud ran 33 years — and management sat on it for two months
Japan's cable giant let inspectors invent test results from 1986 to 2019, told no one for two months, and needed seven years to close the file.
Read the caseZhonghong: A-shares' first penny-stock delisting, born of a ¥6.15B bet the board never saw
Its chairman prepaid ¥6.15 billion for a Hainan project without board approval; twelve months later the stock was the first ever delisted under ¥1 par.
Read the caseGenesis hid a $1.1B hole with a 10-year IOU — New York billed the estate $2 billion
NYAG found DCG papered over Genesis's 3AC losses with a decade-long note booked as a current asset; the settlement that followed was worth up to $2 billion.
Read the caseRakuten forced sellers to absorb shipping over ¥3,980 — and drew an emergency injunction
Rakuten made free shipping above ¥3,980 mandatory for its sellers, then pressed the holdouts. Japan's JFTC asked a court to stop it 19 days before launch.
Read the caseMetersbonwe's founder handed the firm to his daughter — she lost ¥3.2B in seven years
In November 2016 Zhou Chengjian handed his fashion empire to his daughter, who had never run a business; she lost ¥3.2B in seven years and he returned in 2024.
Read the caseLoro Piana placed under court supervision for labour exploitation in Italian supply chain
The Milan Tribunal found workers making Loro Piana cashmere for €4/hour in unauthorised workshops — the brand was put under court administration for a year.
Read the caseA Duke cancer researcher faked data — and patients were enrolled in clinical trials for it
Anil Potti falsified genomic data for personalized cancer treatment — statisticians flagged it in 2007, Duke ran trials anyway, 27 papers retracted.
Read the caseShougan Maifu denied it was closing — and the denial emptied every store in Changsha
Owing wages and closing shops, the bakery told customers 'we're only optimising.' The reassurance triggered a prepaid-card run that shut all 20-plus stores.
Read the caseDentsu bet $49M on the Woodstock name — the festival was cancelled with zero tickets sold
Dentsu contracted $49.1M to revive Woodstock with Michael Lang; permits capped the site at half the planned crowd; the festival died with zero tickets sold.
Read the caseKorea's homegrown WiBro network shut down after 12 years — LTE won the standard war
Korea commercialized WiBro, its own mobile-internet standard, in 2006 — five years before LTE — and shut it down in 2019 with about 22,000 users left.
Read the caseRoopalben Panchal cornered IPO retail quotas with thousands of fake demat accounts
Roopalben Panchal and 23 other key operators split IPO applications across thousands of fictitious demat accounts, cornering the retail quota of 105 IPOs.
Read the caseA 2 a.m. crash emptied Tiger Woods' sponsor list in three weeks
Tiger Woods' 2009 scandal: five sponsors walked within weeks — Accenture, AT&T, Gatorade, Gillette, Tag Heuer — Nike stayed, and endorsements fell $22M a year.
Read the caseA routine upgrade at Rogers took down Canada's networks for 19 hours — 911 went with it
On July 8, 2022 a routine upgrade at Rogers wiped out phone and internet for 12 million Canadians for 19 hours — taking Interac payments and 911 down with it.
Read the caseHanover Finance froze NZ$552m of investor savings — the five-year rescue plan paid cents
NZ’s largest finance company froze repayments in 2008 and promised investors their money back over five years if property recovered. Property didn’t.
Read the caseTurkey fined five supermarket chains ₺2.67bn for using suppliers as a price-fixing hub
Turkey's biggest grocers coordinated shelf prices through the suppliers they all bought from. The Competition Board called it a hub-and-spoke cartel.
Read the caseOld Monk: FSSAI banned three variants as 'not rum' over flavouring and age claims
India's cult dark rum is mostly neutral spirit with added flavouring — FSSAI banned three variants in Maharashtra and the court wouldn't lift the ban.
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