Business failures, costly decisions and the lessons they leave behind.
The full archive, in the appYanjiyou expanded on flagship stores built to be destinations. COVID crushed traffic, and the flagships that built the brand became the debt that sank it.
Read the caseIreland bought thousands of Nedap e-voting machines before anyone certified them, used them in one election, and scrapped the lot at scrap value.
Read the caseHowie Hubler shorted $2B in subprime correctly, then sold insurance on $16B in AAA CDOs with the same mortgages — losing $9B, the largest ever at the time.
Read the caseIn four days Netflix cut Kevin Spacey from House of Cards and shelved a finished film; its next earnings disclosed a $39M charge.
Read the caseAn overheating European data center forced Wikipedia to fail over to Florida; the switch broke DNS resolution for every Wikimedia project worldwide.
Read the caseA ceramics-and-property shell renamed itself after P2P, added 101% in 21 days, and got its controller China's biggest-ever securities fine — ¥3.47 billion.
Read the caseKorek's chair corrupted Iraq's telecom regulator into voiding Orange and Agility's $810M stake; an ICC tribunal found the bribery and charged $1.65B.
Read the caseWatsons China oversold a 1-cent mask sale, and when buyers asked why on its livestream, the host compared them to mad dogs and bragged about kicking them out.
Read the caseTakahiro Miyashita founded TheSoloist in 2010 and left it in July 2025, after the 15th year. On 30 April 2026 the brand's Aoyama flagship closed.
Read the caseSuzuki certified 26 models and 2.14 million cars without the legally required coastdown test; made to redo it, every car beat its filed figure.
Read the caseRanjit Chandra fabricated infant formula and multivitamin studies, used a pseudonym to publish a confirming paper, and lost his Order of Canada.
Read the caseJapan's fast-fashion EC mall peaked in 2021, then lost ground three years running. In February 2025 CROOZ sold it to Seoul's MEDIQUITOUS, waiving ¥311M of debt.
Read the caseDi'ai IPO'd in December 2021 on one rule: a man may buy one DR engagement ring in his life. Three years on, revenue had fallen by two-thirds.
Read the caseCCI found India's top OTA imposed price parity, deep discounts and exclusivity on hotels — and delisted rivals for OYO — fining both a combined Rs 392 crore.
Read the caseIn 2008, Tata Motors paid $2.3B for Jaguar Land Rover as Ford bled cash. Analysts said Tata overpaid for broken brands. JLR became Tata's most valuable asset.
Read the caseWeeks after its IPO, Zomato's celebrity ads praising delivery partners were mocked as tone-deaf, and its 'well-intentioned' defence was called a non-apology.
Read the caseTEB-1 carried 300 passengers over 300 metres in Qinhuangdao. Five cities signed pilot deals. Within a year the prototype was scrap and 32 were investigated.
Read the caseSanjeev Gupta's metals empire ran on Greensill's 'prospective receivables' financing and lost roughly $5 billion overnight when Greensill collapsed.
Read the caseBrussels blocked Airtours buying First Choice fearing collective dominance, lost in court in 2002, and in 2007 cleared the same consolidation anyway.
Read the caseA netizen's comparison showed Orion snacks cost more in China than Korea. The company denied it, but the damage was done — and sales never recovered.
Read the case