The CMA's first-ever Phase 2 referral killed the Pure Gym–Gym Group merger
Britain's two budget gym chains agreed a £300m merger of equals; the CMA's debut in-depth referral over 14 local overlaps ended it in under six months.
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2,000 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDLog4j's 'Log4Shell' bug was in everything — and the internet spent a month patching
A zero-day in Apache Log4j (CVE-2021-44228) allowed remote code execution on millions of servers. It was 'the biggest vulnerability in a decade.'
Read the caseCoinsquare faked 90% of its trading volume; the OSC made its founders pay
Canada's largest crypto exchange faked over 90% of its volume with 840,000 wash trades, fired the employee who flagged it, and paid $2.25M
Read the caseA surrogacy accusation emptied Zhang Yuqi's ad portfolio in 72 hours
An accusation on 24 January — by the 27th, skincare brands had deleted every trace of her, a Spring Festival gala had dropped her, and her ad revenue was gone.
Read the caseExxon Valdez spilled 11M gallons of oil — and Exxon had no plan to clean it up
Exxon's tanker hit Bligh Reef, spilling 11M gallons. The captain was drunk. The response was a fantasy. Cleanup cost $2B. Litigation lasted 19 years.
Read the casePalazzo Versace Dubai: Sunland swapped its AED2.3bn hotel away; it opened in 2016
Australia's Sunland touted its Dubai Versace hotel as 81% complete — and five months later swapped the whole project to its builder for zero cash.
Read the caseGermany's top court ruled FlixBus must prove its green claims
The German Federal Court of Justice ruled FlixBus must remove unsubstantiated green claims from its Belgian website, setting a cross-border precedent.
Read the caseCasper spent $423M on marketing to sell a product people buy twice a lifetime
Four years of advertising made it the best-known mattress brand online. Only 16% of direct customers ever bought again, and the IPO priced below its own range.
Read the caseBharatPe's co-founder called a banker a 'chor' — the board ousted him in five months
Ashneer Grover built a $2.8B fintech, then cursed out a banker on a leaked call, fabricated expense claims, and was pushed out by his own board.
Read the casePoizon's 'authenticate first' model failed — 50% inspection failure, court ruled fraud
Poizon built China's largest sneaker platform on guaranteed authenticity — until regulators found 50% of products failed inspection and a court ruled fraud
Read the caseA respected psychologist published evidence of ESP — the replication crisis was born
Daryl Bem's 2011 paper claimed people could sense the future. It passed peer review, failed every replication, and became a landmark of the replication crisis.
Read the caseTelexFree promised 200% returns on a VoIP product that earned $1.3M — then the SEC came
Massachusetts MLM TelexFree took in over $3B promising 200% returns for posting ads; VoIP sales were $1.3M; the SEC called it a pyramid in April 2014
Read the caseHugo Hettich made annual clocks for 35 years — then employees sued and dollar collapsed
A German clockmaker's restructuring would cut 30 jobs. 16 employees sued to keep theirs, and the plan died. Then the dollar halved, killing 60% of its market.
Read the caseCoincheck lost ¥58B of NEM from a hot wallet and refunded most of it
Hackers drained 523M NEM (about $534M) from Coincheck's internet-connected hot wallet in January 2018 — then the exchange promised a ¥46.3B refund.
Read the caseCalyon lost $350M on unauthorized credit bets — discovered after Labor Day weekend
A 26-year-old trader at Calyon's New York proprietary desk made unauthorized credit bets above his limit. Risk managers found it days later.
Read the caseA channel built on one host's provocations lost its license — C8 is off French TV
C8's bet on Cyril Hanouna's TPMP cost it a record 7.6M euros in fines and finally its TNT frequency; the channel went dark on March 1, 2025.
Read the caseHitachi Metals faked test data since the 1980s — then sold itself to Bain
A whistleblower letter exposed four decades of rewritten inspection data shipped to 1,747 customers — and a president who ordered the cover-up.
Read the caseKuwait's Umm Al Hayman sewage plant: announced 2009, due 2015, still finishing in 2026
Kuwait needed years of failed tender deadlines before signing a €1.6bn PPP for one sewage plant — then several more years to commission it.
Read the caseSEBI impounded ₹546 crore from finfluencer Avadhut Sathe's unregistered trading academy
SEBI impounded ₹546 crore from Avadhut Sathe's academy for unregistered stock tips after it collected ₹601 crore from 3.37 lakh students.
Read the caseKorea's four biggest SPA operators called plastic leather 'eco'
Musinsa Standard, Topten, MIXXO, SPAO and Zara marketed polyester 'eco leather' as green. On 15 May 2025 they got Korea's first fashion greenwashing sanction.
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