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Case Study 26: Accenture – The Success Story That Was Never Meant to Happen
8. April 2026
In boardrooms across the professional services industry, one reference point appears with almost ritualistic regularity whenever the idea of separating audit and consulting is raised: Accenture. The story is compelling precisely because it is so clean. A consulting arm breaks away from an audit-dominated structure, frees itself from regulatory constraints, accesses capital markets, and emerges
Case Study 24: PwC’s “Monday” – How a $20bn Spin-Off Fell Apart
29. März 2026
In June 2002, inside PricewaterhouseCoopers, something unusual had already taken shape. The firm was no longer discussing whether to separate its consulting business. It had already done the structural work required to make that separation real. Registration documents filed with regulators described a fully constructed corporate entity, with defined governance, ownership structures, and a legal
Case Study 23: The Fragmentation of a Global Firm – How Private Equity Is Reshaping Grant Thornton
23. März 2026
For most of its history, Grant Thornton operated through the standard global professional-services model: a network of legally separate member firms sharing a brand, methodologies, and network infrastructure, but not functioning as a single worldwide partnership. Grant Thornton International itself states that its member firms are separate legal entities, that GTIL and the member firms
Case Study 22: The $600 Million Failed EY Split (“Project Everest”)
19. März 2026
In 2022 and 2023, Ernst & Young pursued the most ambitious restructuring attempt in modern Big Four history: a plan, code-named Project Everest, to separate most of its consulting business from its audit and assurance business. The logic was straightforward. Audit independence rules constrained cross-selling and limited growth in advisory. A split promised to unlock
Case Study 21: The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) $250 Million CHESS Blunder
6. Januar 2025
The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) embarked on an ambitious journey to replace its 25-year-old Clearing House Electronic Subregister System (CHESS) with a state-of-the-art, blockchain-based platform. Initially envisioned as a groundbreaking project to enhance efficiency, security, and scalability, the CHESS replacement project quickly turned into a cautionary tale. The initiative faced repeated delays and escalating costs
Case Study 20: The $4 Billion AI Failure of IBM Watson for Oncology
7. Dezember 2024
In 2011, IBM’s Watson took the world by storm when it won the television game show Jeopardy!, showcasing the power of artificial intelligence (AI). Emboldened by this success, IBM sought to extend Watson’s capabilities beyond trivia to address real-world challenges. Healthcare, with its complex data and critical decision-making needs, became a primary focus. Among its flagship
Case Study 19: The $20 Billion Boeing 737 Max Disaster That Shook Aviation
20. August 2024
The Boeing 737 Max, once heralded as a triumph in aviation technology and efficiency, has since become synonymous with one of the most catastrophic failures in modern corporate history. This case study delves deep into the intricacies of the Boeing 737 Max program—a project that was initially designed to sustain Boeing’s dominance in the narrow-body
Case Study 18: How Excel Errors and Risk Oversights Cost JP Morgan $6 Billion
2. Juli 2024
In the spring of 2012, JP Morgan Chase & Co. faced one of the most significant financial debacles in recent history, known as the «London Whale» incident. The debacle resulted in losses amounting to approximately $6 billion, fundamentally shaking the confidence in the bank’s risk management practices. At the core of this catastrophe was the
Case Study 17: The Disastrous Launch of Healthcare.gov
19. März 2023
Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, after defeating his opponent John McCain by 365 electoral college votes to 175. One of Obama’s primary campaign issues was fixing America’s healthcare system by providing affordable options to the 43.8 million uninsured Americans. In 2010, the year Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the United
Case Study 16: Nike’s 100 Million Dollar Supply Chain «Speed bump»
16. Oktober 2022
“This is what you get for 400 million, huh?” Nike President and CEO Phil Knight famously raised the question in a conference call days before announcing the company would miss its third-quarter earnings by at least 28% due to a glitch in the new supply chain management software. The announcement would then send Nike’s stock