和总统大选一样吸引眼球：2016年五大商业丑闻

财富中文网 | 2016-12-30 21:30

During an election year, any story has to compete for attention with the all-consuming race for the White House. But the public always has an appetite for a good scandal, and plenty of misdeeds on the part of the global business class were able to break into the headlines over the past 12 months.

Whether it was Wells Fargo employees creating fake accounts in the names of real customers, or pharma giant Mylan imposing big price increases on users of its 心life-saving EpiPen, there were plenty of stories this year that highlight the pitfalls on the road to business success, and the fact that people in power abuse that power all too often. Here are the biggest scandals of 2016:

Wells Fargo's Fake Accounts

在像2016年这样的大选年里，任何新闻要想跟总统大选抢头条，都不是一件容易的事。不过老百姓对丑闻却总是津津乐道的，因此在过去一年间，的确也有不少跨国企业里发生的丑闻成功占据了媒体头条。

不管是富国银行的员工用真客户的名字开立假账户，还是制药巨头迈兰公司对很多病人的救命药狠提价，今年发生的很多诸如此类的事情都表明，企业的成功路上布满陷阱，拥有权力的人又经常会滥用权力。以下就为您带来2016年的五大商业丑闻。

富国银行的假账户

富国银行前首席执行官约翰·斯通普夫。

Wells Fargo was the golden child of the post-financial crisis banking world. The bank's focus on funding itself with a large base of retail deposits helped it weather the late-aughts credit crisis and emerge even stronger with a truly nationwide presence. The downside to Wells Fargo's strategy? To grow profits, it had to rely on its ability to cross-sell more profitable products to its customer base.

That path wound up leading the company into a quagmire. Executives sought to drive growth by putting undue pressure on its employees to hit sales quotas, and many employees responded by fraudulently opening customer accounts. In most cases these accounts were closed before customers noticed, but in other cases consumers were hit with associated fees or took hits to their credit ratings. The bank was forced to return $2.6 million in ill-gotten fees and pay $186 million in fines to the government. But the biggest hit Wells Fargo will take is to its reputation, as the media and government officials spent much of the year slamming the bank for its fraud. (The scandal also cost CEO John Stumpf his job.)

Roger Ailes's Sexual-Harassment Scandal

2016年7月19日，纽约市，艾尔斯与妻子伊莉莎白·蒂尔森步行离开新闻集团大楼。

When former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson made public her lawsuit against Roger Ailes, the chairman and CEO of Fox News, few thought the suit would end the career of the most successful cable news executive of his generation. But the news of Carlson's action opened a floodgate of reports about complaints from several other women that Ailes had allegedly harassed over the years.

James Murdoch and his brother Lachlan—who have run Fox parent 21st Century Fox as CEO after their father Rupert stepped down in 2015—commissioned an internal review by outside lawyers that uncovered several other allegations of sexual harassment. That report convinced the executives they had to force Ailes out, though not before offering him a $40 million severance package.

Ailes eventually settled with Carlson for $20 million, and he continues to face lawsuits from other accusers. Though Ailes went on to be a player in Donald Trump's successful presidential campaign, his wipeout this summer remains one of the most surprising and headlong downfalls of a top executive in recent memory.

Mylan's Epipen Price Gouging Scandal

2016年9月21日，美国国会山，迈兰公司CEO海瑟·布莱什出席众议院监督委员会和政府改革委员会组织的听证会。

The American consumer is no stranger to steep price hikes on drugs. But few increases drew outrage like drug company Mylan's decision to raise the price of its EpiPen. The device, which administers epinephrine, a crucial antidote for those suffering anaphylactic shock due to allergic reactions, is beloved by parents of the 1 in 13 children that suffer from food allergies in America. But Mylan has increased its price by 400% since acquiring the device in 2007.

Many American families, especially those with high-deductible health insurance, struggle to afford the $500 sticker price for the life-saving drug. And with Mylan controlling a near-monopoly on such products, consumers were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Congress dragged CEO Heather Bresch in front of the House Oversight Committee to answer for her pricing decisions, and the bad publicity caused Mylan's stock to drop precipitously.

The scandal also prompted state attorneys general to investigate the company, with New York's AG looking into whether the company committed antitrust violations, and West Virginia's AG launching a Medicaid fraud probe into the drugmaker’s pricing. The company settled in October with the Justice Department over whether it underpaid rebates to U.S. government healthcare programs by misclassifying the drug.

Samsung Battery Recall

一部受损的三星Galaxy Note 7手机，其主人名叫乔妮·甘茨·巴威克。她称她在夜里三点被这部手机冒出的浓烟和火花弄醒了。

如今的智能手机几乎已经无所不能了，但自爆显然不是大多数消费者最需要的功能。

今年夏天，有报道爆料称最新推出的三星Galaxy Note 7手机容易爆炸，随着各路媒体竞相追踪报道，此事也像滚雪球一样闹得越来越大。第一批报道发出后不到一星期，美国联邦航空委员会便建议乘客在飞机上不要让Note 7开机或给其充电，也不要把它放在货舱里托运。（大多数航空公司现在已经完全禁止Note 7上飞机了。）美国消费产品安全委员会随后也呼吁Note 7的机主彻底停止使用该手机。

三星随后对Note 7启动了正式召回，然而此时这个小号二踢脚已经让一些消费者中了招，导致三星陷入了官司缠身和公关告急的境地。

素食品公司汉普顿克里克雇“托”造假丑闻

Smartphones can do just about anything these days, but exploding is not on the top of most consumers' list of desired features.

When reports began to surface this summer that batteries in the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 were exploding, the tech press jumped on the story, which snowballed quickly. Just a week after the first reports surfaced, the Federal Aviation Administration advised passengers not to turn on or charge Note 7 smartphones aboard aircraft or stow them in plane cargo. (Most airlines now ban them from their cabins entirely.) Then the Consumer Product Safety Commission urged Galaxy Note 7 owners to stop using their phones altogether.

A formal recall process was then initiated, but not before phones began harming consumers in various ways, leading to lawsuits and a PR nightmare for the South Korean electronics giant.

Exaggerations at Vegan Mayo Maker Hampton Creek

汉普顿克里克公司CEO约什·蒂特里克。

Hampton Creek, a San Francisco "plant-based food" startup best known for its eggless mayonnaise, has been a pugnacious presence in its industry since its 2011 launch, fighting (and often winning) legal tussles and public-relations battles with regulators and bigger food companies over the health claims of its products.

But Hampton's Creek reputation took a much heavier hit in September when a detailed exposé in Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported that the company had exhibited “pattern of mistaken or exaggerated claims that may prove to be deliberately deceptive.” The report revealed that Hampton Creek employees and contractors had bought up huge quantities of the company’s products at retail outlets, effectively inflating the company's sales numbers. It also alleged that the company had raised money from investors using claims about its products' environmental sustainability that were later disproved.

Hampton Creek has denied any wrongdoing, and said that the retail buybacks were part of a quality-control effort. But the company's tactics have prompted investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department. The saga of Hampton Creek, which counts many prominent tech venture capitalists among its investors, has also helped draw attention to the potential for abuses and number-fudging among startups and their financiers in Silicon Valley, as Erin Griffith reports in the January issue of Fortune.

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