Business Blooper: Ten Seconds That Cost Him Everything

Some companies collapse over years. This one started collapsing in the middle of a laugh.

On April 23, 1991, Gerald Ratner, CEO of the world's largest jewellery retailer, told a room of six thousand business leaders and journalists at the Institute of Directors' conference that his own products were "total crap," joking that one of his earring sets wouldn't outlast a supermarket sandwich. The remark went national overnight. Customers stopped buying, roughly £500 million was wiped off the company's market value within days, and by the end of 1991 the stock had fallen about 80 percent. Ratner was dismissed as CEO in November 1992, and the company renamed itself Signet Group in 1993 to erase his name from the business entirely.

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