Trust us: authenticity needs work
In the early years of this millennium, the business sector became a punchbag for its detractors as fraud and incompetence brought down some of the world’s largest corporations. First there was the collapse of the energy giant Enron in 2001, closely followed by its “Big Five” accountancy firm Arthur Andersen. Eight months later, WorldCom went bust, becoming the biggest corporate bankruptcy in American history.
Fast forward six years to 2008 and there were two even larger insolvencies in the shape of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual. Just three months after that, Bernie Madoff’s $64 billion Ponzi scheme came to light. By now, of course, the world was in the grip of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression and trillions of dollars had been wiped off the global stock of consumer wealth.
