Notable Controversies
The Guinness share-trading fraud was a corporate takeover scandal of the 1980s. In April 1986, the British government launched an investigation into Guinness' purchase of Distillers Company for equity valued at $3.8 billion. The government suspected that Guinness had illegally inflated its stock price to sway Distillers' shareholders away from a competing offer from the Argyll Group, a Scottish food retailer.
Several executives were implicated in the investigation: the Guinness CEO Ernest Saunders, several top executives at Morgan Grenfell (Guinness's investment bank), and Guinness' director of financial strategy & development and then Bain VP Olivier Roux (who had temporarily been assigned to Guinness by Bain). Roux was still on Bain's payroll at the time, prompting public criticism that Bain was guilty of a conflict of interest and leaving Bain vulnerable to lawsuits. Roux later resigned his posts at both Guinness and Bain.
Read more about this topic: Bain & Company
Famous quotes containing the word notable:
“Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it’s more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)