FTX was the third-largest crypto exchange in the world. Customers were told their funds were held separately and the company did not touch them. In reality the money flowed into Alameda Research — the same principal's hedge fund — while one person controlled both the exchange and the fund trading on it. There was no one to verify this. In November 2022 the exchange collapsed within days, customers lost around $8 billion, and the principal was sentenced to 25 years.

Theranos was valued at $9 billion on a promise of blood testing from a single drop. The principal overrode the company's own labs: the devices did not deliver the claimed accuracy, but the public promises did not change. Internal scientists who reported failures were pushed out. In 2015 an investigation revealed that most tests ran on third-party equipment; the company closed and the founder was sentenced to 11 years.

WeWork filed for its IPO in August 2019. Investors saw the company from the inside for the first time and the filing was pulled six weeks later — the valuation fell from $47 billion to under $10 billion. The principal had leased the company buildings they personally owned, sold it a trademark echoing its name, and held shares with 20-to-1 voting rights. Each item was explainable alone; together they meant the founder and the company were no longer separate. The founder was removed.

Enron was the seventh-largest corporation in the US, valued at up to $68 billion. The company booked expected future profit as already earned and moved loss-making assets into off-balance-sheet vehicles. The principal who built this model stepped down as CEO in August 2001, having realized a significant part of a personal share package. Four months later the company filed for bankruptcy: 29,000 people lost their jobs and over $2 billion in pension savings vanished.

In June 2017 five of Uber's largest investors demanded the principal resign immediately — the company was worth $68 billion. It followed a recording of the principal berating a driver, an engineer's account of a harassment culture ignored for years, and an independent investigation confirming a toxic environment top to bottom. The principal's conduct had become the company's conduct, and it turned into lawsuits, an investigation and the departure of senior executives.

Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975 and held patents on the very technology that later destroyed its core business. Leadership assumed film would remain the center of the market and held the digital line back so as not to undercut film revenue. The market moved; the picture guiding decisions did not. In 2012 Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

Adelphia was the sixth-largest cable operator in the US, with billion-dollar revenue. As the company grew, its principal and family used corporate funds as their own: over $2.3 billion in loans went to private purposes outside procedure, while for the rest of the company procedure applied in full. The board, majority-held by the family, did not restrain it. In 2002 the scheme surfaced, the company filed for bankruptcy and the founder was convicted.

Boeing was bringing the 737 MAX to market under pressure from schedule and competition. The principal pushed the priority of the timeline over engineers' signals down the chain: those who raised concerns about the MCAS system met resistance, not analysis. "Don't slow the release" became the norm of the vertical. Two crashes in 2018 and 2019 took 346 lives, the fleet was grounded worldwide, direct losses exceeded $20 billion, and the principal was dismissed without a severance package.

General Electric was for decades regarded as the benchmark of management. The principal, inheriting the company at its peak, ran it for years on the old course — complex acquisitions, an inflated financial arm, reporting that masked the weakness of divisions. The course did not change while the market beneath it did. By 2017 the stock had collapsed and the company was removed from the Dow Jones index, where it had sat since 1907.

Michael Ovitz, the most powerful agent in Hollywood, was brought into Disney personally by the company's top man — into the number-two position, on a personal relationship rather than a built-in role. His standing rested on one patron and drew on neither the board nor an independent result inside. When the relationship with the patron soured, the position vanished with it. Ovitz was forced out after 14 months; influence tied to one person zeroed out the moment that person changed his mind.

The principal of Microsoft stayed at the helm for more than a decade, running the company on the inertia of a successful PC model. The moment to move on was read by habit of the position, not by the state of the market: the mobile and search waves were missed while the company stayed profitable and therefore "invisible" from the inside. When the exit came in 2014, the company spent years catching up on what it had missed. The position was left not when the market required it, but when the inertia ran out.

Wells Fargo set aggressive cross-selling targets for years. The principal was caught between shareholders' demands for growth and the reality on the ground, where staff under pressure opened around 2 million fake accounts. Signals from below did not reach the top; the board's expectations were passed down as a hard target. The gap surfaced publicly: fines, a Senate hearing, the principal's resignation and clawback of part of the compensation.

The principal of Nissan and Renault built personal income, privileges and influence around the position in the alliance for years — they were inseparable from the seat. When internal conflict and a financial investigation put the position under threat, everything fell with it. Arrest in 2018, resignation, flight from the country — the loss of the position turned into a personal catastrophe.

Nokia was the world leader in mobile phones. The principal reduced the complex shift of platform to a familiar model — "our hardware is better" — and underrated the market's move to smartphones and ecosystems. The complexity of the new market was not acknowledged in time. In 2013 Nokia sold its mobile business to Microsoft, losing a lead it had held for more than a decade.