Here are some of the outcomes that have involved risks faced by international companies in recent years:
- Perrier was compelled to instigate a worldwide recall of mineral water bottles when benzine was found in some routine sample tests
Union Carbide was required to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in claims after the gas leak in Bhopal, India.
Exxon incurred considerable costs when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground and leaked massive amounts of oil
Intel faced huge recall expenses as well as Directors’ and Officers’ liability suits when certain shareholders filed actions alleging they had badly handled a problem with their Pentium chip. Specifically, a minor problem became a worldwide crisis when the company poorly communicated this issue to its customers.
The World’s largest Insurer, AIG received a $182b bail out by the US Government. It had suddenly collapsed in September 2008 due to bad bets it made insuring mortgage-backed securities. Fox Business Network reported “On the subject of risk management, Mr. Greenberg the once head of AIG was as bold as ever, saying “had I stayed there, what I’m sure about, the break down in risk management would not have taken place”.
BP oil spill 20th April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico total estimated cost is $9.5b “Thus, it comes as no surprise that, as The Times also reported, no BP official had overall responsibility for safety on the Deepwater Horizon. This points to the main lesson of this case: In hazardous operations — such as the search for energy sources in increasingly dangerous environments — minimizing catastrophic risk demands strong, accountable safety supervisors and workable, realistic planning for emergencies”. Dana M. Radcliffe, Senior Lecturer of Business Ethics at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.