Six people who hit the headlines this year
Dec 22, 2011
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The faller
John Corzine
The fall-out from the former New Jersey governor’s disastrous $6.3bn bet on the eurozone continues to poison the markets. Nearly two months after MF Global’s bankruptcy (the eighth largest in US history), Corzine has got everyone from the Feds to Congress on his tail, investigating the mysterious disappearance of some $1.2bn in client funds. Quite a downfall for the ambitious Illinois farmer’s son who rose to become head of Goldman Sachs. Asked by one senator whether he authorised the use of customer money to finance the firm’s own bets on European bonds, Corzine replied: “I never intended to break any rules.” That may not be enough to save him. A year ago, the banker, who liked to greet colleagues with the word “Peace”, was being tipped to succeed Tim Geithner at the American Treasury. His prospects in 2012 look a good deal bleaker.
The whistleblower
Michael Woodford
Before he blew the whistle on an accounting scandal at Japanese photo giant Olympus, Woodford was virtually unknown in Britain. But soon after he became one of the few outsiders to head a major Japanese corporation earlier this year, all hell broke loose. After discovering that $1.5bn of the firm’s cash had been diverted to shadowy investment funds following a series of odd takeovers, Woodford was ritually fired by the Olympus board and fled the country amid “dark warnings” of Japanese mafia reprisals. He described it as like “finding myself in a John Grisham novel”. Within weeks, Olympus admitted to trying to disguise losses dating back to the 1990s. Woodford returned to Japan in triumph. “I have done my duty to purge” this firm, he says – indicating he’ll resume his post, if asked. So far shareholders haven’t shown themselves to be overly keen.
The fashionista
Tamara Mellon
In a tough year for retailers, luxury merchants have been cleaning up in the international glamour markets. Jimmy Choo, the shoemaker co-founded by Mellon on the back of a £150,000 loan from her father in 1996, is no exception. This year Mellon walked away from her creation after it was sold to luxury goods group Labelux for £500m. Mellon (considered a “no-hoper” at school) “has a sense of the dramatic”, says Zoe Wood in The Guardian. Choo sales took off after she targeted high-profile events like the Oscars. She went on to make her image synonymous with the brand: a typical publicity shot has Mellon, in her signature stilettos, “reclining on a cream leather sofa under six pictures of coiled snakes”. Having retained the rights to use her own name, she is now tantalising fans: “Anyone who knows me, knows there will be a new venture afoot.”
The survivor
James Murdoch
Of all Rupert Murdoch’s older children, his younger son James once seemed least likely to become his successor. A college drop-out, apparently more interested in tattoos and grunge music than business, he eventually proved himself in the tough Asian pay TV market and went on to become Murdoch senior’s heir apparent. Will 2011 mark the end of the road? One thing that Murdoch Jr has certainly inherited from his father is the will to survive. Labelled “a goner” by many at the height of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal in the summer, he has survived repeated attempts to oust him from the boards of News Corp and BSkyB. Even now he continues to deny knowledge of widespread hacking at the paper – despite mounting email evidence to the contrary.
The icon
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs once described death as “very likely the single best invention of life” because it “clears out the old to make way for the new”. His own demise this year further enhanced his messiah like status in the eyes of followers. Having stepped down from the Apple helm two months before his death, Jobs had had the satisfaction of reading his own, mainly panegyric, obituaries, which hailed him as everything from a design genius to the first true “auteur” to lead a major company. Yet he was barely dead before the backlash kicked in. The publication of a biography by Walter Isaacson led to stories of tantrums, vendettas against rivals, cruelty to underlings, and “sociopathic” behaviour. Whatever his faults, Jobs was perhaps the most important business leader of his generation.
The protestor
Kalle Lasn
The veteran editor of anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters didn’t invent the anger that fed the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, says The New York Times, but “he did brand it”. Last summer, as uprisings shook the Middle East and riots broke out across Europe, he decided to tap the simmering frustration of the American left by creating a new hashtag on Twitter: #OccupyWallStreet. By autumn, the movement had spread across the US and Europe. Estonian-born Lasn formed Adbusters to skewer corporate America. His “subversive” campaigns included the 1990s Joe Chemo, against Camel cigarettes, and the more recent “Everything is Fine, Keep Shopping”. Lasn hopes the protests will “somehow change the power balance and make the world into a much more grass-roots, bottom-up kind of place”.
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