For those of you who read my blog, you know that I’ve had an interest in Tata’s acquisition of Jaguar and Rover. When it was announced, I failed to see the value proposition in the combination of Tata and JLR, and I remain somewhat skeptical of JLR’s ability to provide value to Tata (for background see Jaguar/Rover Revisited, Jaguar/Rover Update, and Buyer’s Remorse).

Irrespective of my opinion, it was with great interest that I read this week’s Economist, which contained an article on Tata’s progress with those previously beleaguered brands (see Tata Motors’ Boss Moves Up a Gear).

After a torrid couple of years in which demand for JLR’s pricey models evaporated…2010 has seen at least a partial recovery in sales and profits…

After the success of the mid-size XF and with heavily revised Range Rovers and the radical new XJ saloon just launched, JLR’s product line-up has never looked in better shape.

MY COMMENT: I will give that to them. Tata Motors is performing better now than in 2009. They are profitable again, with net income of around $550 million. However, a look under the hood suggests that profitability was not bolstered much by results at JLR (Jaguar Land Rover). A good chunk of Tata Motors’ profitability came from a gain booked on the partial sale of Tata’s stake in Telco Construction Equipment. JLR’s net profit was reported at around $20 million. That’s very small (less than 5% of total profit for a brand that represents greater than 50% of Tata’s entire automobile enterprise), …but it’s admittedly greater than zero.

Another thing that I will say about Jaguar and Land Rover: Their new models are stylish. They are good looking cars. And boy have they been marketing the heck out of them in the US. Everywhere I turn I feel like I see/hear another JLR advertisement – on TV, radio, billboards, and even through the internet (e.g., pandora radio). This is more than I ever remember Ford promoting those brands.

So Tata Motors is definitely making the investment. The question remains: Will the pricey advertising campaigns pay off, or are the brands already too far gone??

Nevertheless, I will admit there are definitely some things for the optimists to get excited about.

Back to the article:

One of the biggest puzzles Mr Forster [the Chief of Tata Motors] has to solve is how to replace the legendary Land Rover Defender…The new vehicle will have to be cheaper to make (and sell) than the current “Landie” to make it competitive with Japanese rivals in developing-country markets…[and] come up with a product capable of finding at least 80,000 buyers a year—four times as many as the current Defender. There is a good chance that, to keep costs down, the new model will be made in India.

MY COMMENT: Um wait. From what I remember of the original deal, Tata agreed not to shift production out of the UK, and made pledges not to cut staff or close plants. It’s unclear to me therefore how many of those 80,000 cars they’ll be able to assemble in India.

The new-model blitz is in impressive contrast with the sluggish pace of development under JLR’s cash-strapped previous owner, Ford.

MY COMMENT: Yes, I agree the new models (especially the Jaguar XF/XJ and the Land Rover Evoque) are impressive. However, lest we forget, these models were designed and developed under the previous owner, Ford. What matters most is what comes next, …in the generation of models that follow. We’re still several years away from seeing the fruits of any design efforts under Tata Motors.

And one of the big takeaways from the article:

Apart from economic uncertainty in its traditional markets, there is, however, one big cloud on the company’s horizon: ever-tightening fuel-efficiency and emissions rules.

MY COMMENT: Really?? That’s it? Fuel-efficiency and emissions rules? That’s the best you can come up with?

C’mon, JLR’s downside risks are far greater than that. For example:

1. How will JLR compete with the Japanese (Acura, Infiniti, Lexus) on price or the Germans (BMW, Audi, Mercedes) on perceived quality? My view is that JLR’s models are too expensive to effectively compete with the Japanese manufacturers. They just don’t have the volume. And they are not as highly regarded as the German brands. They just don’t have the prestige, and as a result must settle for lower margins. In this sense then, JLR is stuck in the middle.
2. The auto industry continues to be saddled by mass overcapacity. Coupled with what I suggested in point #1, it’s not entirely clear to me how Jaguar and Land Rover can survive the inevitable industry shakeout.
3. What happens if/when the global economy slows again (especially in Europe and the US) and sales of durable goods decline? JLR is already teetering on the verge. Even a modest economic slowdown could spell the end to the brands.
4. JLR still carries a hefty debt burden that Tata Motors is working through. Even with a restructuring of that debt, a turnaround of JLR is a tall order, and $3 billion in debt is not chump change. It’s reasonable to ask whether Tata will ever earn enough (even if JLR remains profitable) to provide a reasonable return on investment.
5. As in my previous posts, I still wonder about Tata’s ability to derive synergies from JLR, to rationalize JLR’s operations, and right two long-uncompetitive brands.

But who knows. Tata Motors might just prove me wrong. After all, JLR is marginally profitable (for now). And Tata Motors certainly picked a qualified leader in Carl-Peter Forster to lead the group.

Only time will tell…

In January I predicted that “major” bankruptcies in 2010 would number around 300 (see Notable Bankruptcies of 2010: Q1). According to Bankruptcydata.com, there were 59 “major” filings in the first half of 2010. Assuming that bankruptcies are equally distributed throughout the year, this puts us on pace for around 120 bankruptcies. Again, this would be well shy of my prediction.

In previous posts I discussed why I believed “major” business bankruptcies were tracking below expectations (see Notable Bankruptcies of 2010: Q1 and Notable Bankruptcies of 2009). The candidate explanations include: an improving economy; massive government stimulus/liquidity programs keeping structurally weaker firms on artificial life support; and the recovery disconnect between Main St. and Wall St. (i.e., small-firm bankruptcies are on the rise even while major bankruptcies have declined).

Personally, I continue to believe that the significant dip in “major” business bankruptcies that we have witnessed over the past year has a lot to do with the extraordinary government stimulus and liquidity programs. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the disconnect between the bankruptcy patterns across small and large corporations (see Notable Bankruptcies of 2010: Q1 for details). And as I’ve maintained all along, absent a second round of stimulus, we will find out if my hypothesis is correct as the stimulus and liquidity programs begin to wind down. In this sense then, the true test for corporate balance sheets (and by extension, the economy) will come in the second half of the year.

Given the recent troubles in Europe and the softer economic employment and growth numbers at home, it continues to be my expectation that the pace of corporate bankruptcy filings will increase in the second half of 2010. Will we ultimately reach 300 “major” business bankruptcies? At this point, likely not. But I do not think 200 is out of the question.

If fundamentally weak companies are being propped up by an artificially-stimulated economy that cannot structurally support them, it is only a matter of time before bankruptcies begin to reflect true underlying economic fundamentals.

Anyhow, below you can find an updated list of what I see as the “noteworthy” bankruptcies of 2010, as reported by Bankrupctydata.com. New additions since March appear in RED (please note that this is not an exhaustive list):

• Affiliated Media, Inc. (Newspapers)
• American Mortgage Acceptance Company (Real Estate)
• Anthracite Capital, Inc. (Real Estate)
• Atrium Companies, Inc. (Windows and Doors)
• Beach First National Bancshares, Inc. (Banking)
• Black Gaming, LLC (Gambling)
• Chem Rx Corporation (Pharma Services)
• Community Bancorp (Banking)
• Corus Bankshares, Inc. (Banking)
  
• Electrical Components International, Inc. (Manufacturing)
• EnviroSolutions Holdings, Inc. (Waste Disposal)
• Evergreen Bancorp, Inc. (Banking)
• FirstFed Financial Corp. (Banking)
• Haights Cross Communications, Inc. (Publishing)
• International Aluminum Corporation (Real Estate)
• Mesa Air Group, Inc. (Airlines)
• Morris Publishing Group, LLC (Media)
• Movie Gallery, Inc. (Retail)
• Neenah Enterprises, Inc. (Manufacturing)
• Neff Corp. (Construction)
• Orleans Homebuilders, Inc. (Real Estate)
• Penton Business Media Holdings, Inc. (Media)
• Point Blank Solutions, Inc. (Security)
• Regent Communications, Inc. (Media)
• R&G Financial Corp. (Banking)
• Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers (Healthcare)
• Spheris Inc. (IT Services)
• TierOne Corporation (Banking)
• The Newark Group, Inc. (Paper)
  
• Uno Restaurant Holdings Corporation (Restaurants)
• US Concrete, Inc. (Construction/Basic Materials)
• Xerium Technologies, Inc. (Paper)

File this under funny…

The Economist ran a brilliant (the sad but true kind of brilliant) article last week about the increasing meaninglessness of job titles (see Too Many Chiefs). Their take-away: “Inflation in job titles is approaching Weimar levels.”

Kim Jong Il, the North Korean dictator, is not normally a trendsetter. But in one area he is clearly leading the pack: job-title inflation. Mr Kim has 1,200 official titles, including, roughly translated, guardian deity of the planet, ever-victorious general, lodestar of the 21st century, supreme commander at the forefront of the struggle against imperialism and the United States, eternal bosom of hot love and greatest man who ever lived.

When it comes to job titles, we live in an age of rampant inflation. Everybody you come across seems to be a chief or president of some variety. Title inflation is producing its own vocabulary: “uptitling” and “title-fluffing”. It is also producing technological aids. One website provides a simple formula: just take your job title, mix in a few grand words, such as “global”, “interface” and “customer”, and hey presto.

The rot starts at the top. Not that long ago companies had just two or three “chief” whatnots. Now they have dozens, collectively called the “c-suite”. A few have more than one chief executive officer; CB Richard Ellis, a property-services firm, has four. A growing number have chiefs for almost everything from knowledge to diversity. Southwest Airlines has a chief Twitter officer. Coca-Cola and Marriott have chief blogging officers. Kodak has one of those too, along with a chief listening officer.

…The number of members of LinkedIn, a professional network, with the title vice-president grew 426% faster than the membership of the site as a whole in 2005-09. The inflation rate for presidents was 312% and for chiefs a mere 275%.

Although I believe that title inflation is a real phenomenon, I’m not sure that citing the growth in vice-president, president, and chief titles listed on LinkedIn over the period 2005-2009 is the cleanest evidence of such (however clever). It could just as easily indicate that senior officers who were reticent to join LinkedIn in the early going finally recognized its value and joined en masse later in the game.

But back to the article:

What is going on here? The most immediate explanation is the economic downturn: bosses are doling out ever fancier titles as a substitute for pay raises and bonuses.

Not sure that’s quite the right explanation. Although the downturn has probably fed title inflation, I doubt bosses have been systematically doling out fancier titles in lieu of pay. They haven’t had to. After all, who’s going to leave the firm in this market??

Rather, my hunch is that it has just as much to do with displaced workers being forced into becoming chief of their very own micro (single person) enterprise. That, and an increasing trend toward independent contracting (explanations that are not mutually exclusive).

I would have been more willing to buy the “bosses are doling out ever fancier titles” to try to manipulate an employee’s sense of worth within the organization. After all, title inflation is not a new phenomenon. It’s an increasing trend that predates the financial crisis, and even the dotcom era.

One of the oldest jokes floating around the financial industry for as long as I can remember is that “Everyone’s a VP at a bank.” And part of the fun during the high-tech/dotcom era was watching the titans of this new industry eschew traditional titles while, at the same time, mocking convention. So I found myself disagreeing with the author’s assertion that:

The American technology sector has been a champion of title inflation. It has created all sorts of newfangled jobs that have to be given names, and it is also full of linguistically challenged geeks who have a taste for “humorous” titles. Steve Jobs calls himself “chief know it all”. Jerry Yang and David Filo, the founders of Yahoo!, call themselves “chief Yahoos”. Thousands of IT types dub themselves things like (chief) scrum master, guru, evangelist or, a particular favourite at the moment, ninja.

Rather than engaging in title inflation, if anything, by adopting quirky titles, I think the chieftains of tech are really just calling “Bullshit” on the whole title inflation charade.

But my nitpicking aside, I encourage you to take a read of the whole article. Hysterical!

So after Fox 5 shifted the originally planned segment from Monday to Tuesday and changed the time from 7:15am to 8:15am, they finally ran their story on the New York MTA. See the embedded video below.

If the video doesn’t work for you, feel free to visit Fox’s website (see Where the MTA Spends Money). In a story accompanying the video, Fox writes:

With an $800 million budget shortfall that has resulted in service cuts and the looming possibility of fare hikes, the MTA should look to cutting employee costs, Robert Salomon, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business told Good Day NY on Tuesday.

“I think that’s the elephant in the room,” said Salomon.  “A full sixty cents on every dollar goes to employee costs”

From salaries, to health benefits and pensions, a significant amount of money is spent on employees.

MTA officials have said there are consolidating functions to reduce unnecessary spending, but at the end of the day, Salomon says it’s up to elected officials to force changes on the agency.

“It’s up to legislators to say enough is enough,” added Salomon.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to touch upon all the points that I came prepared to discuss, but I guess that’s what happens in a short segment.

I came armed with data. For example, not only do employee costs account for some 60% of the overall MTA budget, but its employment cost structure compares unfavorably with other large municipal transportation authorities (e.g., Boston, DC, and Chicago) and even a privately-operated transit company (e.g., Keolis). Believe it or not, the MTA spends in excess of $100,000 per employee in pay, benefits, and pensions ($7.2 Billion annually). It doesn’t even collect enough in revenue ($6 Billion in fares, tolls, etc.) to cover its employee costs.

That said, it was not my intent to bash unions on the show. I certainly hope it did not come across that way.

I am not anti-union by policy; however, the fact is that in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, MTA employees are not sharing in the pain. In fact, in December 2009 the MTA was forced to grant a three year pay increase of 11% to the employees represented by the Transit Workers Union (TWU). This leaves commuters and taxpayers to shoulder the burden not only for the previously anticipated MTA budget shortfall caused by the financial crisis, but also the added shortfall caused by the mandated TWU pay increase.

This begs the question: How much more in taxes, service cuts, and fare hikes (which have significantly outstripped inflation over the years) can the commuter/taxpayer absorb???

And the worst of it is that absent the involvement of legislators, nothing can be done about the contracts that bind the MTA to overly-generous pay packages. This is why I said that simply streamlining existing operations and shedding administrative employees is not enough. It’s up to our elected officials to intervene, more equitably divide the pain among the parties involved, and say “Enough is enough!”

Given that the unions hold incredible sway with our public representatives, I am not holding my breath…

I will be appearing on Fox 5′s Good Day New York tomorrow morning (Tuesday) for a segment on the (mis)management of the New York MTA at 7:15am (changed to 8:15am). They want to discuss not just the financial trouble the MTA currently finds itself in, but also the organizational constraints that the MTA faces in trying to run as a leaner, more efficient organization.

The thing that strikes me about the MTA is how much of the organizational budget is dedicated – in some way, shape, or form – to employee costs. Nearly 60% of the total budget is comprised of payroll, overtime, benefits, and pensions. Wow!

The MTA does not compare favorably with its peers in this respect. And given the current structure of its contracts, I’m not sure there’s much the MTA can actually do about it in the near term.

Feel free to tune in if you’re interested in this topic, …and I’ll post a clip after the segment airs.

Don’t know how many of you caught the recent news, but a new Nano (Tata’s ultra-cheap car) spontaneously burst into flames last week soon after its owner drove it off the lot (see Car Fire Raises Safety Concerns for details and a FIERY photo).

When it was launched less than a year ago, the $2,500 Tata Nano was promoted as a safe, ultra-cheap car for poor Indians, an alternative to the motorbikes that zoom precariously around the country.

New questions about the safety of the pint-sized auto are being raised, however, after one of them burst into flames Sunday as it was being driven home from the showroom.

I have no doubt that Tata is trying its level best to develop a car that’s at once affordable and reliable. However, in light of this incident, I can’t help but be reminded of the folly that was the Yugo. The Yugo debuted in the U.S. in the 1980′s with great fanfare, only to disappoint in just about every imaginable way. In fact, a recent book details its ignominious history and goes so far as to label it the worst car in history (see Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History).

If Tata plans to sell the Nano in developed markets (it has stated that it will), it best make sure that it overcome the quality issues that currently dog it – not only the perceptions, but now, the reality. In fact, after digging a bit deeper into the Nano, I discovered that this was not the first problem of its kind. There have been four similar occurrences. That may not sound like many, but when you’ve only sold 30,000 units, it is more than a minor issue.

Let’s not also forget that Tata is the owner of Jaguar and Rover (see Buyer’s Remorse). Although I am not privy to financial performance data for Jaguar or Rover, my understanding is that the two brands have been underperforming (see Jaguar/Rover Revisited or Indian Firms’ Foreign Purchases). Of additional concern for Tata is that the fallout from Nano spillover to consumer perceptions of Jaguar and Rover.

Add that to Tata’s growing list of headaches…

A friend and colleague from Oxford (Mike Barnett, Director of the Saïd Business School Center for Corporate Reputation) sent me a brief Op Ed he penned about the challenges Toyota faces in preserving its reputation for quality (see Toyota Can Still Save Reputation). Mike writes:

A good reputation is a dangerous thing.  If no one thinks highly of you, and you do something bad, it makes little difference. You have nothing to lose: but if you are standing high on a pedestal and you do something bad, causing you to wobble and waver, you have a long way to fall.

Toyota was high on a pedestal, reputed for its superior quality, and then life-threatening defects captured media attention.  How far will Toyota fall?  It depends upon how quickly Toyota can capture the conversation.

To stop its descent and recover its reputation, Toyota must give people something positive to talk about.  Errors are inevitable, especially in something as complex as automobiles; recalls are a regular feature.  It is the hesitance and delay in initiating a recall, not the recall itself, which has made this into a bigger reputation destroyer than it might have been otherwise.

Toyota has an opportunity to show that, even though it may sometimes mess up, it will always make good.  This will turn the conversation to, “Hey, even when Toyota hits a bump, it is always looking out for the customers’ welfare”, and away from “Toyota screwed up and won’t admit it, so I can’t trust them”.   Do this, and the public is quick to forgive, or at least forget.  Where Toyota does not want to get bogged down is in publicly battling over fault with its sticky pedal supplier.  Avoid the Ford-Firestone trap, as the conversation will continue to drag on in the negative.

Interesting. And some wise advice.

Toyota is taking some well-deserved heat for its delay in issuing a recall in the face of evidence that problems existed with its accelerators. In fact, Toyota long maintained that there was nothing wrong with its accelerators. At first it cited driver error, until the evidence suggested that there could not possibly be so many horrible drivers. Then they shifted the blame to faulty floor mats. Strike two.

At this point, Toyota would be wise to issue (and reiterate) mea culpas. Toyota cannot apologize too much. It should then, as Mike Barnett suggests, handle the situation in an honest and transparent way – keeping the public apprised on an almost daily basis. And once it identifies the defect, claiming that a solution has been found is not enough. The problem (and its solution) must be described in detail, and in a way that customers can understand. They need to detail what happened, and why. They then need to describe how their fix remedies the problem in a non-technical way.

Halting production until they find a solution is certainly a good (however costly) first step; but along the way, Toyota ultimately needs to redeem itself in the eyes of the consumer. It is important for Toyota to understand that how it bounces back is not simply a function of how quickly it can find a fix, but also in how quickly it can win back the public trust.

There was a fascinating read in the New York Times last week about Microsoft’s lack of innovativeness (see Microsoft’s Creative Destruction, ht Sean). Interestingly, Dick Brass, the author of the piece, and a former Microsoft employee, does not attribute Microsoft’s technological tribulations to a lack of talent on staff or a dearth of ideas. Although there have been some high-profile exits, he argues that the pool of talent at Microsoft is on par with that of the broader tech community, and that there have been some ground-breaking technologies developed within Microsoft. The problem is that many of the innovations never see the light of day. This is because, according to Brass, Microsoft has a corporate culture that breeds internal turf battles that quash innovation.

AS they marvel at Apple’s new iPad tablet computer, the technorati seem to be focusing on where this leaves Amazon’s popular e-book business. But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.

It [Microsoft] employs thousands of the smartest, most capable engineers in the world…And yet it is failing, even as it reports record earnings.

Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator. Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason.

What happened? Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation.

Full disclosure: I have never worked for Microsoft, so I cannot verify whether Dick’s story is reflective of Microsoft’s reality. However, this outcome is not uncommon to large, bureaucratic organizations, …especially monopolists.

Anyhow, I’ve provided the teaser. I encourage you to read the article in its entirety. Fascinating stuff!!

The New York Times ran a feature article on Sunday about China’s dominance of the alternative/clean energy space (see China Leading the Race to Make Clean Energy). Although the author points to some interesting stylized facts, not one suggests cause for concern.

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

MY COMMENT: So what? Does this make them the technological leaders in that space? No! Why? Because most of the technological advances in alternative energy (the knowledge creation portion of the value chain) are a product of the West – Europe and the U.S., …and to a lesser extent Japan and Korea.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels.

MY COMMENT: Again, why is this a bad thing? See above.

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

MY COMMENT: Nonsense. To the extent that China is reliant on the knowledge/technology developed in the West to manufacture equipment, it’s good for both sides. Western alternative energy firms have a market in which to sell their valuable knowledge and Chinese producers have a market to sell the output from the factories that use those productive knowledge inputs. This is how international trade works. In fact, without demand from the Chinese market, development costs for firms in the West would be much, much higher. This allows our alternative energy firms not only to prosper, but to create jobs in the nascent sector.

So although the title of the Times article is appropriate – China certainly is “making” more clean energy in the manufacturing sense, the West is specializing in the higher value-added, higher margin, higher growth activities (see Globalization Discontents and Globalization Revisited). I don’t know about you, but I’ll take the latter.

From the humor category, BNET recently published its list of Business Blunders of 2009. Some were amusing. For example:

Mistake #3: The “Smart Choice” food label

In August, 14 of the country’s largest food companies — including PepsiCo, Kellogg’s, Kraft, and General Mills — join forces to launch a multimillion-dollar food-labeling program, dubbed “Smart Choices,” to guide consumers in selecting nutritious foods amid the nation’s obesity epidemic. Soon, however, the program’s green checkmark logo is seen popping up on jars of fat-laden mayonnaise and boxes of Froot Loops cereal, a product that lists sugar as its top ingredient. In October, after the FDA announces plans to crack down on misleading labeling, the program is voluntarily halted.

Mistsake #5: IBM offers foreign assignments to its laid off employees

IBM lays off thousands of North American workers, and then gives them the opportunity to apply for similar jobs in countries such as Brazil, India, Nigeria, and Slovenia — if they’re “willing to work on local terms and conditions.” Big Blue magnanimously offers to help with moving costs and provide visa assistance.

Mistake #6: Unions firing their own employees

The powerful, 1.7-million-member Service Employees International Union announces a layoff involving 75 national field staffers and organizers. The union representing those employees, the Union of Union Representatives, quickly files a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the SEIU of engaging in unfair practices such as unilaterally laying off UUR members without proper notice, outsourcing their jobs to non-union workers, and selecting workers for layoffs “because of their [UUR] membership and/or activities.”

Mistake #12: Now here’s an incentive

In July, jobless citizens seeking benefit information from the Web site of the Brazilian Labor Ministry must type in the passwords “shameless” and “bum” to access the relevant details. The ministry blames the prank on a private Internet security firm whose contract with the government had not been renewed.

Mistake #20: Now this is REO

After a couple hit by the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme is forced to surrender its $12 million beachfront home in Malibu, Calif., to Wells Fargo, neighbors notice something odd: a large party being thrown in the presumably vacant house. After an investigation, Wells Fargo admits that the house was being used by an employee, identified by the Los Angeles Times as Cheronda Guyton, a senior vice president in charge of foreclosed commercial properties. The employee, who neighbors say had been spending weekends at the house with her family, is fired for violating bank rules against personal use of bank-owned property.

There are some other good ones in there. To see the full list, click through to Business Blunders of 2009. Some funny stuff!