The world of business can be a harsh one, and even some of the best-known global companies that have survived for decades aren’t invincible. Businesses that once seemed to dominate the world have been tainted by huge fraud scandals, plagued by recession or have simply failed to keep up. Here are the public failures of 17 huge companies.

The 90s wasn’t a great decade for US airlines. In the 1920s, Eastern began life as a mail carrier for the US Postal Service, but by the 1950s the airline dominated domestic travel along the profitable East Coast corridor. Known as one of the ‘Big Four’, the business thrived up until the 1970s, but following the Air Transportation Deregulation Act of 1978, it fell into a downward spiral.

The act introduced a free market in the commercial airline industry, removing US Federal Government control over fares, market entry of new airlines, and routes. By 1989 the company was forced into bankruptcy – the largest airline bankruptcy in US history at the time – and $50 million was set aside to reimburse customers. By 1991 the airline was grounded for good.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is the man to thank for the five minutes of fame that these vehicles enjoyed. The SUVs and trucks were popular during the 1990s and 2000s, manufactured after the Hollywood actor pestered automaker AM General to bring out a range of army HumVee vehicles for civilians. The actor had spotted the military vehicle while filiming a movie in Oregon, and saw its potential as a road car. In 1992, Schwarzenegger got his way and the first civilian Hummer, H1, was released.

With three models eventually released, sales grew astronomically throughout the decade. Yet rising oil prices, combined with consumers’ environmental awareness about the sheer amount of gas these vehicles got through, led to a decline in sales. In 2006, the company ceased production and, despite an attempt to sell it to Chinese company Tengzhong, the Hummer SUV brand was shut down in 2010. However, the military version of the car does still exist.

From 1927 until its collapse in 1991, Pan Am was the largest international air carrier in the US, and was praised for innovations which revolutionised the industry, including the use of jet aircrafts and computerized reservation systems. Yet the company's failure to withstand turbulent times was its death knell.

There are many reasons why Pan Am collapsed. The 1988 Lockerbie bombing that took place on a Pan Am flight from London to New York killed all 259 people on board when it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, and was perhaps one of the most significant factors. Then a rise in fuel prices, coupled with a decreasing demand for air travel during the Gulf War which began in 1990, sealed Pan Am's unfortunate fate, and the airline ceased operations in December 1991.

A computer company that once rivalled Apple, Commodore started life as a typewriter repair and assembly business in 1954. Progressing through to pocket calculators and then home computers, the company released its iconic C64 computer in 1982 (pictured), selling at $595. Although that works out at a hefty $1,579 in today’s money, it still cost half the price of the Apple II – its main competitor at the time.

At its peak, the C64 was selling 2.5 million units per year. But sales declined towards the end of the 1980s and, in 1994, the release of one poorly performing games console later, the company filed for bankruptcy. Despite attempting a relaunch under the name Commodore USA between 2010-2013, the brand ultimately went defunct.

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Yet another airline to fall from grace, TWA was founded back in 1930 following a merger between Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express. Taken over by tycoon Howard Hughes in 1939, the company experienced surging growth throughout the 1940s and 1950s due to increasing demand for air travel. Hughes, however, was an eccentric owner whose erratic decisions contributed to TWA's failure to properly compete in the market when rivals were buying up big jets. Hughes left the company in 1960, but in 1978 the Airline Deregulation Act threw open the domestic market to a slew of competitors and spelled the end for the carrier...

TWA was acquired in 1988 by billionaire investor Carl Icahn (pictured here in 2015), who took the company private and left it unable to cope under the weight of a whopping $540 million debt. The ailing airline went through a number of bankruptcies during the 1990s and early 2000s, and was eventually bought by American Airlines in 2001, which 'absorbed' the brand the following year.

What goes up must come down – or at least, that was the case for energy company Enron, which reached great heights before its catastrophic collapse. At the time of its demise, Enron was one of America’s largest corporations, and its closure affected the lives of 22,000 employees.

It seems hard to believe the company fell from grace so soon after making $111 billion in revenues in 2000. That's because it transpired that company leadership had used off-the-books accounting to overstate profits and hide its debts. When analysts became suspicious, shares dropped, going from a peak of $90.75 in August 2000 to just $0.67 in 2002. Enron is now only remembered as a symbol of corporate corruption and fraud.

Once upon a time, WorldCom was the second biggest long-distance phone company in the US – nowadays, it’s synonymous with one of the biggest accounting fraud cases in US history. Despite the appearance of impressive growth throughout the 1990s, with the company purchasing MCI Communications in 1998, it transpired that CEO Bernie Ebbers had cooked the books.

Ebbers (pictured) and other company members had under-reported line costs, as well as inflating the company’s assets by $1 billion (£788m) through fake accounting entries. After an investigation by its internal auditing department, WorldCom uncovered a staggering $3.8 billion (£3bn) in fraud between 1999 and the first quarter of 2002. In July 2002, WorldCom filed for bankruptcy, then in July 2005 Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the fraud. To ensure operations would continue in the future, WorldCom merged with MCI Inc Communications, which it is still known as today.

The largest supplier of PCs throughout the 1990s, Compaq was at the forefront of PC technology for years. Launched in 1982, it was the first company to re-engineer the IBM PC – as the Compaq Portable – which was key to its success. Yet the rise of Dell, which produced quality computers at more competitive prices, began to make a dent in Compaq's profits by the late 1990s.

When the company merged with DEC in June 1998, at the dawn of the dotcom bubble, it was widely regarded as one of the worst tech mergers in history. After releasing a slow computer chip in 2001 off the back of billions of dollars of investment, the product performed poorly. Compaq was snapped up in 2002 by HP for $25 billion, and the brand was restricted to a small number of budget models until it was quietly discontinued in 2013.

Former GM executive John DeLorean founded the auto manufacturer in 1975. With millions of dollars in funding from the British government, as well as from Hollywood celebrities including Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis Jr., he built a factory in Northern Ireland and rolled the first cars off the assembly line in 1981. Yet the business' success would be short-lived.

With a then-expensive selling price of $25,000, owning a DeLorean was out of reach for most people, and the company produced less than 9,000 of the iconic gull-wing cars (the Back to the Future car) before shutting down in 1982. On the same day that the company's closure was announced, DeLorean was accused of trafficking charges, although he was later acquitted.

Founded in 1880 by William Alfred Paine and Wallace G Webber, this brokerage firm had a colorful history. The company made it through a securities fraud scandal in the late 1930s, and seemingly came back even more powerful in the 1980s with 161 branches in 42 states and six offices in Asia and Europe. By late 2000, PaineWebber was the fourth largest private client firm in the US with 8,554 stockbrokers employed in 385 offices.

As the company became more popular, expansion was the next move. PaineWebber acquired southeastern brokerage firm J.C. Bradford & Co. for $620 million in 2000, but as many brokers left the firm with their clients, the merger wasn’t profitable. Later that year, in November, the company completed a $10.8 billion cash and stock merger with UBS AG, and by 2003 the 123-year-old PaineWebber name was known as UBS Wealth Management USA.

Once the fourth-largest investment bank in the US, Lehman Brothers was operational for 158 years from 1850. Between 2003 and 2004, the banking giant acquired three mortgage lenders including so-called subprime mortgage lender BNC Mortgage LLC and Alt A lenders. In the years following, the company noted record profits from real estate, but trouble brewed in February 2007 when defaults on US subprime mortgages rose to a seven-year high.

In 2008, the comany filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy following a major loss of clients, dramatic stock losses and devaluation of assets by credit rating agencies. This was all due to Lehman’s involvement in the subprime mortgage crisis, supposed negligence and excessive risk taking. Lehman Brothers had survived several financial crises but the US housing market collapse proved too much for the company. As a result, the company’s North American investment banking and trading businesses, and NYC headquarters, were sold to British bank Barclays.

There are few riches-to-rags stories that so many of us will remember as well as Woolworth's. The mass market retailer, founded in 1879, established many retails standards which are still used today. In the US, Woolworth's 'five-and-dime store' model grew as the company quickly acquired land and expanded – yet this eventually spelled its undoing, as in the first quarter of 1997 alone the chain suffered operating losses of $24 million, compared to a loss of $37 million for the whole of 1996.

Unable to turn the business around, Woolworth’s announced in July 1997 it would close more than 400 five-and-dime stores in the US, with 9,200 jobs lost and a $223 million charge for discontinued operations. Then in 2001, the original parent company changed its name to Foot Locker, which is now the largest athletic shoe company in the world with more than 3,000 stores. Despite being sold off, the UK arm of the Woolworth's empire also finally went under in 2009.

Blockbuster was an American-based home movie and video game rental business which operated through video rental stores and eventually moved into online DVD-by-mail and streaming services. However, the company got caught up in internal feuds when CEO John Antioco, who was keen to promote subscription-based rental and streaming, was fired and the services were scaled back.

As we know from the later success of streaming services like Netflix, that was a huge error. Hit hard by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank in 2008, Blockbuster was left $350 million in debt and filed for bankruptcy in the US in 2010. The movie rental chain isn't completely dead yet, though – one store remains open in Bend, Oregon, which has managed to stay alive thanks to a combination of loyal customers and nostalgic visitors.

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A family-run business that made Michigan proud for 40 years and was once one of the country’s biggest booksellers, the first Borders store was opened in Ann Arbor in 1971 by brothers Tom and Louis Borders. Within the year, the franchise grew to 21 bookstore locations. Thinking that they were onto a good thing, the Borders brothers sold the chain to Kmart in 1992 for about $125 million.

Under Kmart's control, the retail giant continued to expand Borders' empire throughout the 1990s, combining it with another of its book brands, Waldenbooks. Sadly, the popularity of bookstores dropped as the popularity of Amazon, e-readers and online shopping grew, and Borders felt the pinch. In 2011, the original store in Ann Arbor closed and the company declared bankruptcy. 

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In 1975, Kodak’s digital camera release was the first of its kind. Following this accolade, engineer Steven Sasson co-created the first modern DSLR camera in 1989. Unfortunately, as the world of photography moved towards online photo sharing, Kodak continued to focus on photo printing.

In 2012, Kodak went bankrupt. After attempts to restructure the company and claw back a bigger share of the market, in 2016 Kodak released the "Super 8", a new camera which combines analogue film and digital technology, and includes the cost of processing. Although the company remains alive today, it's gone from having the lion's share of the camera market to being a niche, vintage brand.

The toy store that no-one could bear to say goodbye to, Toys R Us had a legacy spanning almost seven decades by the time it filed for bankruptcy in September 2017. With the first store opening in DC in 1948, Toys R Us profited from the baby boom and economic prosperity that followed the war years, going on to be considered the most important toy store in the world.

At first, e-commerce helped the business, as Toys R Us teamed up with Amazon in 2000 as its exclusive toy retailer for a 10-year period. Yet when Amazon allowed other toy companies to sell through its site before the end of the contract, Toys R Us ended the partnership. The toy giant successfully sued Amazon, but didn't fully recover. Paired with greedy investors and mismanaged finances, the chain was forced to go bankrupt in September 2017.

British cabinet-maker Thomas Cook launched his eponymous holiday tour operator in 1841, when he took around 500 temperance campaigners from Leicester to Loughborough to a teetotal rally by train. The company gradually grew into an international package holiday provider, with European tours starting from 1855 and trips to America launching in 1866. Thomas Cook offered the first ever escorted world tour in 1872, and by 1888 it had offices around the world. Pictured is one of Thomas Cook & Son's dahabeahs (a passenger boat) on a tour in Egypt.

The family sold the company in 1926, and it passed through several hands. Under the name Thomas Cook Group it even branched into its own airlines in 2003. However, in 2018 the company was advised to split the business to boost its failing finances, and in early 2019 it closed 21 of its travel agent stores, with the company blaming an increase in online bookings. Things got worse, and it reported over £1.5 billion in losses in the first half of 2019. Then, after talks to sell the majority of the business to existing shareholder Chinese company Fosun Tourism fell through, Thomas Cook Group collapsed in September this year. This left 150,000 British travellers stranded in various countries across the world, with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) having to step in to pay to bring them home. 

Epic business fails that cost companies cash and reputation