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From decimal point errors to billion-dollar missed opportunities... Join us as we explore history's costliest blunders that left companies, countries, and individuals with massive financial wounds. These catastrophic decisions and oversights demonstrate how one small mistake can lead to astronomical consequences, forever changing fortunes and futures.
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00:00The penny dropped then, you know, that I had, seven and a half days in bitcoins,
00:04on a hard drive that I'd thrown out a few months ago.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the 20 financial face plants
00:12that prove even the biggest players can fall hard.
00:16We finish just the environmental clearing process. That cost is about $1.3 billion.
00:23Number 20. Heavy Submarine.
00:25Maybe they are designed to reach astonishing depths, but that's no good if your submarine is incapable of surfacing again.
00:33That's exactly what happened to the doomed Isaac Perel class of Spanish Submarine,
00:38when designers realized that somebody at some point had carelessly left a decimal point in the wrong place.
00:45The sub was 100 tons heavier than it should be, meaning that if submerged, it would never be able to return to the surface.
00:52Thankfully, the sub hadn't yet been built, so the schematics were changed to make it longer and capable of supporting all of that extra weight.
01:01Except there was another problem.
01:03The sub was now too large to fit into the port where it was being constructed.
01:08Number 19. New Coke.
01:10In 1985, about a century after Coca-Cola first hit shelves, Coke decided to mix things up and rework the tried-and-tested Coke formula.
01:20Yeah, Coke is it.
01:22Come on, check it out now.
01:24It's got a new taste.
01:26It's a destiny.
01:27Wow!
01:28The result was New Coke, one of the biggest marketing fails and disasters of all time.
01:34The simple fact was that nobody really liked New Coke.
01:37Coke wanted to make its drink taste more like Pepsi, which is a little sweeter than Coke, and it was a resounding failure.
01:44All the taste tests said people preferred the taste of this new product to the century-old product.
01:51What they hadn't factored in was the huge emotional attachment there was to this brand.
01:59Though we understood trying to corner Pepsi's share of the market, consumer capitalism is about choice.
02:05Nobody wants to choose from two identical colas.
02:09It's a Coke.
02:10Coke is it.
02:12There was just no reason for Coke to try and destroy its own business by changing the recipe.
02:16Number 18.
02:18Ronald Wayne sells out.
02:19You know that when people hear your story, they say to themselves, my gosh, $22 billion.
02:25He could have had it.
02:29What can I say?
02:30High side is 2020, which is why this error stings so much.
02:35Back in 76, businessman Ronald Wayne met Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and initially thought they had something with their fledgling computer company.
02:44Wayne went in with a 10% stake in Apple, but it wasn't to last.
02:49Less than two weeks on, he'd lost faith, selling those shares back to the company's founders.
02:53If I had stayed with Apple, I probably would have wound up the richest man in the cemetery.
02:58As we all know, Apple went on to become one of the biggest companies and electronic manufacturers in the world, with over a billion active iPhones as of 2021.
03:08What we wouldn't give for a time machine to the 70s so that we could invest in the Apple shares that Ron Wayne gave up.
03:14I knew exactly what would have been if I had stayed with the company.
03:18I would have wound up heading a very large documentation department at the back of the building, shuffling papers for the next 20 years of my life.
03:27And that was not the future that I saw for myself.
03:29Number 17. Wrong trains.
03:32We've seen submarines too big for their ports, but what about trains too wide for their platforms?
03:38That's what happened in France in 2014, when France's national rail company, SNCF, put in an order for 2,000 brand new trains.
03:46The trains would fit in many big metropolitan stations like Paris' newer infrastructure, but in rural France, the platforms were too narrow.
03:55This all happened because somebody at the French Rail Network gave SNCF the wrong measurements.
04:00The reason that they've got this problem is because RFF, which is the rail network operator, had measured platforms and stations that were built about 30 years ago, and the access between the platforms looked about right.
04:14SNCF was left trying to secretly widen the affected stations, but eventually the error was made public.
04:20The trains themselves cost around $20 billion, and modifying the platforms has cost over $60 million.
04:28Investors are indignant about the mistake.
04:30We refuse to pay a single cent for these repairs, said this spokesperson.
04:34We can't be taken for fools and pay for the privilege.
04:37Number 16. Lost Bitcoin.
04:40How do you feel stood here?
04:42Well, absolutely devastated, as you can imagine.
04:44Unlike so many other current investors, James Howells wasn't chasing a Bitcoin trend.
04:50He was a lifelong computer geek who saw real promise in decentralized currency after the 2008 financial crash.
04:57So, in 2009, he mined 8,000 Bitcoin back when it was mostly discussed on obscure forums.
05:04Years later, assuming the hard drive was junk, he tossed it during a house cleanup.
05:09By the time Bitcoin hit mainstream value, that trash contained a digital treasure worth hundreds of millions at its peak.
05:16Without that file, there is no way of getting the money back, because there is no central server that records a log of it.
05:26He has begged to excavate the Newport landfill ever since.
05:29He's offered robots, funding, and a full recovery plan.
05:32But the city keeps saying no.
05:34For now, a near-billion-dollar mistake is still buried under banana peels and coffee grounds.
05:39Given the value of the needle, if you're willing to search every single piece of hay, eventually you will find the needle.
05:46Number 15. Russia Sells Alaska
05:49It's easy to look at a map of North America and wonder why Alaska, isolated as it is on Canada's western coast and completely separate from the U.S. mainland, is one of the United States.
06:00But it's been that way since the 1860s, when the territory, then controlled by the Russian Empire, was sold by Tsar Alexander II to America for the low, low price of $7.2 million.
06:11He found a buyer in U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, who agreed to purchase it sight unseen.
06:19On October 18, 1867, here in Sitka, Alaska was officially transferred to the United States.
06:26Today, that's over $130 million, which is still a paltry sum when you consider how large and valuable Alaska is, what with its many oil fields.
06:35You can ask the thousands of roustabouts, roughnecks, and oil workers why they come to this frozen patch far above the Arctic Circle to make a living.
06:44But the answer is simple, and one word.
06:46Money.
06:47The reason the territory was sold was to recoup losses from the Crimean War, and because Russia doubted it would be able to defend Alaska from invasion anyway.
06:55Number 14.
06:57Quaker buys Snapple
06:58In the early 90s, Snapple was only on the up.
07:01It had a few high-profile ad campaigns that meant it was able to hold its own in the competitive world of juice and soft drinks, making it look like a promising investment opportunity for Quaker Oats.
07:11Quaker Oats doesn't come with prizes, but there's something in this box that I think is really worth prizing.
07:18Unfortunately, things didn't go to plan.
07:20Though Quaker Oats spent $1.7 billion on a deal it thought was a sure thing, after only three years, Snapple was sold off again, so that Quaker Oats could lick its wounds for a meager $300 million.
07:33Here's some iced tea to pass the time, but remember, nothing takes the place of a good education.
07:38Perhaps a little embarrassingly, Snapple is still going strong.
07:42It seems that separating was the best thing for both of these brands.
07:47Snapple, made from the best stuff on Earth.
07:49Number 13. Star Wars Billions.
07:52In the mid-1970s, nobody knew that Star Wars was going to become one of the biggest pop culture properties in history.
07:59I find your lack of faith disturbing.
08:02Production was expensive and difficult and ran George Lucas into the ground.
08:07Not seeing its potential, 20th Century Fox made a deal with Lucas that he'd receive the royalties for merchandise sales.
08:14What followed set a new standard for merchandisable franchises, giving Lucas a personal fortune to the tune of billions of dollars.
08:22It was a grave error on the part of Fox, and saw the studio miss out on an absolutely obscene amount of money in the decades between Star Wars release in the theaters and Lucasfilms being acquired by Disney.
08:33Number 12. Morgan Stanley's Losses.
08:46If we didn't do a deal, it was over. We couldn't stay in business.
08:50Morgan Stanley deserves a bit of credit. Unlike many on Wall Street, they saw the writing on the wall back in 2007.
08:56They saw the crash coming and still got wrecked. That's the magic of bad timing.
09:01The firm's traders spotted early signs of a subprime collapse and bet against the market.
09:06Smart, right?
09:06Then they sold the winning bet and plowed back into risky, mortgage-backed junk.
09:12Boom. Nine billion dollars vanished.
09:15It was the biggest loss in the firm's history.
09:17CEO John Mack later admitted they didn't understand how toxic the assets really were.
09:22They were right until they weren't.
09:24One financial writer called it, quote, the worst trade of 2007.
09:27No question about it. I mean, we were on the brink of going out of business.
09:31Number 11. California's high-speed rail boondoggle.
09:34California promised a bullet train. What it delivered was a billion-dollar money pit on rails.
09:40First proposed in 1982, the project gained real momentum in 2008.
09:44Voters approved a nearly $10 billion bond to connect San Francisco and L.A. with 220 mile-per-hour trains.
09:51Nearly 20 years later, there's no train, no full route.
09:55This is what California voters envisioned back in 2008 when they voted yes on high-speed rail.
10:01But here we are 15 years later.
10:04Californians were just left with a price tag that's ballooned to over $100 billion.
10:09Entire segments have been delayed, downsized, or abandoned.
10:13Lawsuits, land disputes, nimbyisms, political infighting, you name it.
10:17As recently as June 2025, the project has seen setbacks thanks to an unfriendly White House.
10:23At this point, the only thing moving at high speed is the budget.
10:26We are working very hard to have some kind of segment between that section ready to go by 2030, between 2030 and 2033.
10:34Number 10. Brazil's World Cup improvements.
10:37Brazil dropped $11.6 billion to host the 2014 World Cup, more than any country had ever spent.
10:44The pitch? A world-class tournament with sleek airports, modern trains, and long-term infrastructure gains.
10:51Brazil utterly failed to deliver.
10:53We hope that with the new Maracanã we're building, we can organize an excellent World Cup, and that Brazil can win it again.
11:02Brazil built a few shiny stadiums, sure, but left a trail of broken promises.
11:07Over $3.5 billion worth of planned upgrades were scrapped or never finished.
11:12One venue became a bus lot, others sit mostly empty, collecting rust and regret.
11:17These days, it's practically common knowledge.
11:20Hosting mega-events like the World Cup or Olympics often leaves countries with more debt than glory.
11:25Brazil didn't just lose on the pitch, they lost in the ledgers.
11:29Brazil's sports ministry is downplaying the reports of unfinished stadiums, saying the games won't be affected.
11:36Number 9. Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster.
11:39In 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami rocked Japan.
11:43It triggered one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.
11:47But here's the kicker. It wasn't just nature, it was negligence.
11:50It was the largest quake ever known in Japan, and one of the five largest reported in the world.
11:56The Fukushima Daiichi plant was built on a known fault line.
12:00Backup generators were placed in low-lying areas, almost begging for flood damage.
12:05They could have spent a little more money during construction to build the plant more safely.
12:09They didn't.
12:10When the tsunami hit, the cooling systems failed.
12:12Three reactors melted down, and radioactive materials spilled into the air and sea.
12:17The clean-up is still ongoing, costing over $200 billion and counting.
12:21Fukushima is a textbook example of short-term thinking and greed, leading to long-term consequences.
12:27The officials add that the cost of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is likely to quadruple.
12:33Number 8. Tiger Woods' Affairs.
12:35At the height of his career, Tiger Woods was as much a global brand as a golf legend.
12:40But in 2009, everything came crashing down.
12:43Are you ever that shy kid anymore?
12:46Absolutely. Absolutely.
12:48The money and the glam went to his head, and he stepped out on his wife.
12:52When news of his affairs broke, his reputation imploded.
12:55Woods' marriage collapsed on magazine covers and televisions across the globe.
12:59I'm as disappointed as everyone else in my own behavior, because I can't believe I actually did that to the people I loved.
13:05Tiger's sponsors ran for the hills.
13:07The star lost an estimated $12 billion in endorsements, tournament revenue, and brand value.
13:13Nike stuck with him, but others, like Gatorade, AT&T, and Accenture, bailed fast.
13:19It was one of the most expensive personal spirals in sports history.
13:22Tiger eventually made a comeback, but the fallout never went away.
13:26My failures have made me look at myself in a way I never wanted to.
13:35Number 7. Dubai Aquarium Leak
13:38Leave it to Dubai to build one of the world's largest indoor aquariums inside a $20 billion shopping mall.
13:44It is a perfect symbol for capitalistic excess taken down by a small leak.
13:49More than 33,000 marine creatures can be viewed through a panel so large, it's in the Guinness Book of World Records.
13:57In 2010, the massive acrylic panel holding back about 10 million liters of water and thousands of marine animals started leaking.
14:04Shoppers were evacuated.
14:06Water flooded the high-end shops, and panic set in as engineers rushed to contain the damage.
14:11The aquarium was repaired, but not before the leak made headlines worldwide.
14:15No full cost was ever revealed, but experts estimate the damage and downtime hit the tens of millions.
14:21Proof that even a little crack can cause a luxury-sized mess.
14:26The mall's owners say the leak was quickly fixed, and no fish or humans were harmed.
14:32Number 6. Daimler-Chrysler merger
14:35When German auto giant Daimler merged with America's Chrysler in 1998, it was billed as a $36 billion marriage made in heaven.
14:43What have been the benefits of the merger between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler?
14:48Okay, get in.
14:49As it turned out, it was more along the lines of a drunken drive-thru wedding in Las Vegas.
14:54The two companies clashed on everything from culture and strategy to management.
14:58Chrysler's performance tanked, and morale plummeted.
15:01Daimler slowly realized it had bought itself a major headache.
15:04Any more questions?
15:05No. I'm good.
15:07By 2007, they sold off 80% of Chrysler for a measly $7.4 billion, a staggering loss of nearly $29 billion.
15:15What was supposed to be a global powerhouse became a business school case study in how not to do a merger.
15:21$30 billion, roughly, the loss?
15:23I haven't made a calculation by the versus substantial number, for sure.
15:27Number 5. Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
15:30In 2010, BP tried to save time and money on a deepwater drilling project.
15:35Instead, they triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in history.
15:39Scientists are now reporting vast plumes of oil up to 10 miles long under the surface.
15:45The Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and gushing over 200 million gallons of crude oil into the ocean.
15:54The spill lasted 87 days.
15:56Coastlines were wrecked.
15:57Wildlife devastated.
15:59But the total spill is so much worse than BP let on.
16:03Cleanup and legal costs ballooned to around $65 billion.
16:07BP became the world's most hated company in the world's most hated industry overnight.
16:12Their reputation has yet to recover.
16:14When you value profit over safety, it's always a short-term bet.
16:18It takes one disaster to cost you all the money you've saved.
16:22BP also spent billions of dollars making businesses impacted along the Gulf Coast whole.
16:29Number 4. AOL buys Time Warner
16:31What you will come to know, as we know instinctively, that there is a natural fit between these two companies.
16:40In the year 2000, the dot-com bubble was at its height, and it didn't look like anything would slow down the meteoric rise of the Internet.
16:48Well, pretty clearly, you know, if you looked at last Friday, the market cap of AOL was twice the size of Time Warner.
16:54I have made a judgment, which I believe to be correct, that going forward, the Time Warner shareholders will be much better off owning 45% of AOL Time Warner than 100% of Time Warner.
17:09Ultimately, the Internet's developments didn't slow down, but the stock market did, leading to a recession.
17:15One of the biggest casualties was the merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2000, which even at the time was viewed by many as being a ridiculous idea.
17:23But things didn't turn out as planned. From the very beginning, the merged company failed to live up to its lofty financial expectations.
17:31To make matters worse, technology stocks that had been thriving in the 90s suddenly fell off a cliff with the burst of the Internet bubble.
17:38AOL spent a whopping $182 billion on merging with Time Warner, but years on, the companies split again.
17:46Today, Time Warner remains a major player in the media business, and while AOL still exists, it's dead in the water.
17:52How the tables turned.
17:55Is that the biggest regret of your life?
17:57What?
17:58Merging with Time Warner?
17:59Having all your money tied up in Time Warner.
18:03I would have liked to see that merger not happen.
18:07Number three, Blockbuster doesn't buy Netflix.
18:11In 2000, Netflix was a scrappy DVD-by-mail service, losing money fast.
18:16Their dreams collapsing around their heads, co-founders Reed Hastings and Mark Randolph walked into Blockbuster HQ.
18:23And so we went to see them, and, you know, they were very polite, but they were not interested.
18:29They practically begged for a $50 million buyout.
18:32Blockbuster responded by laughing them out of the room.
18:35So, Reed screwed up all of his courage, and he said,
18:39$50 million?
18:43And you know what they did?
18:45They laughed at us.
18:47Within a decade, Blockbuster went bankrupt.
18:49Meanwhile, Netflix rewrote the rules of home entertainment.
18:53They eventually pivoted to pioneering the streaming space.
18:56Netflix created its own original content, soon dominating the world.
19:00Today, Netflix is worth over $150 billion.
19:04It's one of the coldest missed shots in business history.
19:07Blockbuster could have become the future of entertainment.
19:10Instead, they were left on the trash heap.
19:13It's always hard to tell, but I think we could have made Blockbuster a modern brand.
19:18Number two, Apollo 13.
19:21Houston, we have a problem.
19:22The basis of a Blockbuster movie starring Tom Hanks,
19:25Apollo 13 was destined for the moon in 1970, but it never made it.
19:30It was plagued by bad omens and bad luck from the very beginning.
19:38Thankfully, unlike many other space failures,
19:40like the high-profile Challenger and Columbia disasters in 1986 and 2003, respectively,
19:46the astronauts in Apollo 13 all survived.
19:49The problem was that an oxygen tank had been damaged long before its installation in the spacecraft,
19:55which was described as a bomb by Commander Jim Lovell.
19:58I looked at my companions and I said, you know, every flight has a crisis.
20:02Something always goes wrong.
20:03This happened early on the flight, and we're now free and clear of any other things going wrong.
20:08That bomb went off, severely damaging the craft when it was already in space.
20:13The crew had to move into the lunar module so they would survive,
20:16and then loop around the moon to return to Earth.
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20:32In 1986, the biggest nuclear disaster on record was triggered.
20:48The Soviet Union was initially extremely secretive about what had happened,
20:53with many downplaying the severity of the meltdown even when nuclear fallout spread as far west as Germany.
20:59Are we now to assume you do not have the situation under control?
21:02No, no, no, no, we do.
21:04I do.
21:09Radiation is within normal limits.
21:12But eventually, the truth came out, and it was revealed that a slew of errors was to blame for Chernobyl,
21:17making it an entirely avoidable tragedy.
21:20It was the human error of the unprepared shift workers,
21:23combined with a fatal design flaw that was known about, but not fixed.
21:27The problem was that the control rods, made of boron, had graphite tips,
21:32and the graphite reacted with the core to cause the explosion.
21:36The boron rods were in fact tipped with graphite,
21:39and that short moment when they are first inserted into the reactor,
21:43the graphite in fact leads to a surge in the power, not a reduction of power.
21:48Without the cheap graphite, the disaster wouldn't have happened.
21:51Do you know of any other instances where big shots went bust?
21:54Let us know in the comments below.
21:56Its latest expected cost of up to $128 billion puts it $100 billion in the red.
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