Thread: Historys worst business decisions.

I'll kick this off with Dick Clarke's decision to involve in the promotion of a Monkey's tour with the Jimi Hendrix experience as the supporting act.



Followed by..........



What the fuck were they thinking.....................

Next I will look at other blunders that were made without thought and those decisions which still today are a curse on our global society.

Your input is appreciated............

Blast from the past...And Hendrix blasted it...'Kin 'ell, LT...Cheers for that...

(And The Monkees tune brought back some sweetheart memories, too)

Heh...

Creators: Brothers Richard 'Dick' and Maurice 'Mac' McDonald set up the first restaurant of the chain which would conquer the world - but sold their idea and lost out on millions.

McDonald's Ray Kroc cheated the brothers who REALLY started empire out of $300m | Daily Mail Online

I knew a guy in Auckland who, no matter what he went into, would fail.
I said of him that if he ever went into the undertaker business or funeral director, someone would invent the elixir of life the next day.

In 1980, Under the direction of CEO John Opel, IBM attempted to contact Digital Research's founder and CEO, Gary Kildall, to license CP/M for use on the 5150 and other future PCs, but when negotiations failed, IBM went looking for another suitor.

Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Paul Allen at Microsoft, seeing an opportunity in the making, approached a tiny software company, Seattle Computer Products, which had an x86-compatible OS which used a similar command interpreter to CP/M called 86-DOS. Microsoft purchased the OS and perpetual usage rights, which they then re-christened as "DOS", for a mere $75,000.

Ten catastrophes: All-time worst tech industry executive decisions | ZDNet

Ronald Wayne.

Co-founded Apple with Steve and er, Steve.

Then sold his 10% share of Apple Inc........ for $800.


In Feb 2015 Apple's shares were worth $700 Billion.

AOL merger was 'the biggest mistake in corporate history', believes Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes

Jeff Bewkes, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, has accepted that Time Warner's merger with AOL was "the biggest mistake in corporate history"
AOL merger was 'the biggest mistake in corporate history', believes Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes - Telegraph

Joe Kennedy's business dealings with the mafia was well documented and very profitable but ended sour when he had his two sons slain by the people that helped to put them in political power.

For me a pretty poor business decision in the end.

^ But LT you have posted that as opinion not fact when it comes to John and Bobbie's assassinations.

The bloke at Decca who said:

"The Beatles have no future in show business".

Originally Posted by sabang

AOL merger was 'the biggest mistake in corporate history', believes Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes

Jeff Bewkes, the chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, has accepted that Time Warner's merger with AOL was "the biggest mistake in corporate history"
AOL merger was 'the biggest mistake in corporate history', believes Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes - Telegraph

Fiorina buying Compaq was monumentally stupid.

What a business disaster when Australia's American cup hero and business Tycoon Alan Bond decided to go after Tiny Rowland and his business empire in the UK.

Didn't last long and left Bondy bankrupt.

Rowland's most merciless victory was over the Australian tycoon Alan Bond, whom he at first befriended as a potential "white knight" when Lonrho was being stalked by another predator, Asher Edelman. Bond bought out Edelman's stake, boasted of himself as Rowland's natural successor and continued buying up shares.
Rowland turned on him with savage intensity, publishing a 93-page document claiming that Bond, sustained by a fragile pyramid of borrowings, was technically insolvent. Bond's bankers demanded their money back, and he found himself facing bankruptcy and jail.

^
Spot on, Tiny was not to be messed with, he gave Mohamed Fayed (ex Harrods) a good going over as well when he freely distributed the book "hero from zero"

A gypsy appearing in a local court explained his criminality was all due to bad luck. When asked to explain further he said, "if I fell into a barrel of nipples I would come out sucking my thumb !"

Originally Posted by Iceman123

Spot on, Tiny was not to be messed with

I had the pleasure of meeting with him based upon a pre-arranged meeting on a train outside of London to discuss an issue I had at the time with Mannessman AG which company I wanted to sue.

I had 20 minutes with him and he told me that I needed millions of dollars to take on such a corporation and I should go back and make more buckets.

I took his advice.

^
We'll done, a great memory I bet. I would have loved to have had 10 minutes of his time.

Originally Posted by Iceman123

We'll done, a great memory I bet.

It was mate.

I had been lucky enough to be invited to the London Stock exchange building in the morning for the opening session, then off to a bar in London where all the brokers gathered around lunch time and then in the early evening was taken to a train station to board a train on the last carriage where I would meet Tiny Rowlands and to discuss this business opportunity.

A few months later Mannessman sold their shares to British Vodaphone for what was then the biggest corporate business buy out in history and then the remainder was split between Siemans and other corporate raiders and I didn't have a chance.

Oh, well I was there, a small player and loved every minute of it.

Originally Posted by Loy Toy

What a business disaster when Australia's American cup hero and business Tycoon Alan Bond decided to go after Tiny Rowland and his business empire in the UK.

Didn't last long and left Bondy bankrupt.

Rowland's most merciless victory was over the Australian tycoon Alan Bond, whom he at first befriended as a potential "white knight" when Lonrho was being stalked by another predator, Asher Edelman. Bond bought out Edelman's stake, boasted of himself as Rowland's natural successor and continued buying up shares.
Rowland turned on him with savage intensity, publishing a 93-page document claiming that Bond, sustained by a fragile pyramid of borrowings, was technically insolvent. Bond's bankers demanded their money back, and he found himself facing bankruptcy and jail.

True story. Bond took a mighty fall.

Originally Posted by beerlaodrinker

a mighty fall.

Gravey Davey?

Here's a complete botch up.

Excite could have bought Google for less than $1 million.
Back in 1999, Excite was the No. 2 search engine and Google was the new kid on the block. Larry Page offered to sell Google to Excite for $750,000 (though with the stipulation that Excite would replace their technology with Google Search tech). There are several possible explanations for why Excite made this choice, but the end result is clear. Excite was eventually bought by Ask.com, which has a less than 2 percent share of the search market. Google has more than 60 percent of the U.S. search market share and much larger share worldwide. And Google has more than $130 billion in assets, so it's worth more than 173,333 times what Excite would have paid for it.

Gene Hackman bought, then sold film rights to Silence of the Lambs.


Appeared in today's NZ Herald.

"It won five Academy Awards, featured the number one film villain of all time and has scared millions of viewers since its release in 1991."

"The Silence of the Lambs is based on the 1988 novel of the same name which was written by Thomas Harris.

The book was a hit and it didn't take long for Gene Hackman, who was looking for a project with which to make his directorial debut, to snap up the film rights.

"It's one of the most cinematic books I've ever read," Hackman said at the time according to Empire Online.


"As I read it, the movie was clicking in my mind."

Hackman planned to direct, produce and appear in the film as Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit.

But the actor later changed his mind and decided to sell the rights, according to Jonathan Demme (who ended up directing the film)."

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

The bloke at Decca who said:

"The Beatles have no future in show business".

They actually said:

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
— Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.