Corporate Failures: A Pathological Exposition of the Global Financial Industry

Abstract

Large-scale business failures marked the beginning of the twenty-first century, which culminated into the global financial crisis. The most well-known disaster, Enron, exposed evidence of corporate greed, fraud, and financial manipulation. The year 2023 also brought with it historic business collapses, with big banks collapsing one after another. This study looked into the primary reasons why companies fail and offered solutions to improve the situation. For this study, a desk research approach was employed whereby materials from previously conducted surveys, articles, journals, documents from public libraries, the internet, and other sources were reviewed. From the findings of the study, it is concluded that the major endogenous factor that leads to corporate failure revolves around bad/poor corporate governance as well as poor risk management practices. Frequent changes in government policies (i.e. exogenous) is a major cause of corporate failures. It is recommended that organizations should eschew multi-disciplinary approach to corporate governance, including economics, psychology, sociology, and law. There should be strong collaboration and co-operation between the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Finance Officer (CFO) in order to strengthen corporate governance through maximised stakeholder value, transparency and accountability and efficient capital allocation.