2005's shenanigans, skulduggery and just plain stupidity.
101 Dumbest Moments in Business : CNN
Preview :
1. Bubble Trouble
"If you grew up in Danvers, and you remember it as the spooky place on the hill, it might not be the right place to live." -- William McLaughlin, an executive with AvalonBay Communities, which is converting boarded-up Massachusetts mental institution Danvers State Hospital into a 497-unit complex of high-end apartments and condos. That sound you hear? Not the ghosts of mental patients, but loud hissing from the wildly inflated housing bubble, which tops our list this year with seven priceless moments of real estate insanity. First up: the nuthouse-to-yuppie-house trend currently sweeping North America, with such conversions also planned in Detroit, New York, Vancouver, and Columbia, S.C., where the centerpiece of the development is an original brick building with the word "asylum" chiseled into the facade.
2. Investment bank error in your favor. Collect an additional $1.43 billion.
The judge in billionaire Ronald Perelman's lawsuit against Morgan Stanley, exasperated by the latter's delays in handing over documents, instructs jurors to assume that the firm committed fraud. The bank insists it isn't stonewalling, just running into technology glitches. The jury awards Perelman -- who had sued Morgan over its role in his sale of Coleman to Sunbeam for stock that became worthless after an accounting scandal led to bankruptcy -- $1.45 billion in damages. Perelman had reportedly offered to settle for $20 million.
3. On the bright side, seeing-eye dogs are total chick magnets.
In May the FDA says it's received 40 reports of sudden blindness in men taking the impotence drugs Cialis, Levitra, and Viagra. Within six months, combined sales of the drugs plunge more than 10 percent from the previous year's levels.
101 Dumbest Moments in Business : CNN
Preview :
1. Bubble Trouble
"If you grew up in Danvers, and you remember it as the spooky place on the hill, it might not be the right place to live." -- William McLaughlin, an executive with AvalonBay Communities, which is converting boarded-up Massachusetts mental institution Danvers State Hospital into a 497-unit complex of high-end apartments and condos. That sound you hear? Not the ghosts of mental patients, but loud hissing from the wildly inflated housing bubble, which tops our list this year with seven priceless moments of real estate insanity. First up: the nuthouse-to-yuppie-house trend currently sweeping North America, with such conversions also planned in Detroit, New York, Vancouver, and Columbia, S.C., where the centerpiece of the development is an original brick building with the word "asylum" chiseled into the facade.
2. Investment bank error in your favor. Collect an additional $1.43 billion.
The judge in billionaire Ronald Perelman's lawsuit against Morgan Stanley, exasperated by the latter's delays in handing over documents, instructs jurors to assume that the firm committed fraud. The bank insists it isn't stonewalling, just running into technology glitches. The jury awards Perelman -- who had sued Morgan over its role in his sale of Coleman to Sunbeam for stock that became worthless after an accounting scandal led to bankruptcy -- $1.45 billion in damages. Perelman had reportedly offered to settle for $20 million.
3. On the bright side, seeing-eye dogs are total chick magnets.
In May the FDA says it's received 40 reports of sudden blindness in men taking the impotence drugs Cialis, Levitra, and Viagra. Within six months, combined sales of the drugs plunge more than 10 percent from the previous year's levels.