https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/ Cinematic documentaries on the biggest corporate failures of the modern era. en-us Wed, 27 May 2026 17:22:21 +0000 https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/logo.png https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/ https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/rbs.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/rbs.html Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 RBS — the Royal Bank of Scotland — became the world's largest bank in 2007 with $3.5 trillion in assets. By October 2008, RBS needed a $45 billion taxpayer bailout. On the morning of October the seventh, two thousand and eight, the chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland telephoned the British Chancellor and told him the bank would run out of money by the afternoon. RBS was the fifth-largest bank... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/sears.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/sears.html Sun, 17 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 On October 15th, 2018, the company that taught America how to shop ran out of cash. Sears — the retailer that once sold everything from socks to entire houses, the Amazon of its century — filed for bankruptcy, one hundred and thirty-four million dollars short on a single loan payment. Sixty-eight thousand employees. Seven hundred stores. One hundred and twenty-six years of history. This is the... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/sackler.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/sackler.html Sun, 17 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 The Sackler family pulled $10 billion out of Purdue Pharma's OxyContin while 800,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. A bathroom floor in Huntington, West Virginia. Eleven forty-seven at night. A twenty-three-year-old woman, slumped against the tub, an orange prescription bottle still in her right hand. The label says OxyContin, eighty milligrams. She is one of roughly two hundred Americans... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/red-lobster.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/red-lobster.html Sun, 17 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 On June twenty-sixth, twenty twenty-three, Red Lobster's chief marketing officer Patty Trevino sent out a press release. The headline was eight words long. Ultimate Endless Shrimp Is Here to Stay, All Day, Every Day. Twenty dollars. Unlimited shrimp. Every day forever. Eleven months later, ninety-nine Red Lobster locations were padlocked overnight. A liquidator called TAGeX Brands auctioned the... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/nikola.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/nikola.html Sun, 17 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 On February nineteenth, twenty twenty-five, Nikola Corporation filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy. Five years earlier, almost to the week, this same company had been worth more than thirty billion dollars — briefly more valuable than Ford Motor Company — and it had never delivered a hydrogen truck to a paying customer. The number that built it began with a lie. In twenty eighteen, Nikola... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/joann-fabrics.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/joann-fabrics.html Sun, 17 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 On February twelfth, twenty twenty-five, the chief executive of Joann Incorporated signed an eight-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company would close five hundred stores. Eleven days later he signed another one. The company would close every store. All eight hundred locations. Nineteen thousand employees. Gone by May thirtieth, twenty twenty-five. Joann Fabrics was... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/ftx.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/ftx.html Sun, 17 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 In November 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried was worth twenty-six billion dollars. FTX was the second-largest crypto exchange in the world. Tom Brady starred in their commercials. Larry David starred in their Super Bowl ad. The Miami Heat played in FTX Arena. Bankman-Fried personally donated forty million dollars to U.S. politicians and was the second-largest political donor in the country. Then in ten... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/big-lots.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/big-lots.html Sun, 17 May 2026 13:00:00 +0000 On December nineteenth, twenty twenty-four, the bankruptcy lawyers for Big Lots Incorporated stood up in courtroom number five at the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and announced that the buyer had walked. The deal — a two-and-a-half-million-dollar cash purchase by Los Angeles private equity firm Nexus Capital Management, approved by Judge J. Kate Stickles only weeks... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/wework.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/wework.html Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 On August 14th, 2019, WeWork filed for IPO at a forty-seven billion dollar valuation. Thirty-three days later, the IPO was dead, the founder was fired, and the company was burning cash so fast SoftBank had to wire five billion dollars in an emergency rescue just to keep the lights on. WeWork had raised twelve billion dollars from investors. It had operating losses of one point nine billion. It... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/theranos.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/theranos.html Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Theranos collapsed from $9B valuation to zero because the blood tests never worked. In 2014, Elizabeth Holmes was on every magazine cover in America. Forbes called her the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. Theranos was valued at nine billion dollars. Walgreens had agreed to put Theranos blood-test machines in every store in America. Henry Kissinger sat on her board. Joe Biden... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/spirit-airlines.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/spirit-airlines.html Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 At 3 AM Eastern Time on May 2nd, 2026, the board of Spirit Airlines pulled the plug. Within six hours, every flight in their schedule was cancelled. 17,000 employees were unemployed. 600,000 passengers were stranded. And in a Florida courtroom, the executives who oversaw the collapse asked the bankruptcy judge for $10.7 million in retention bonuses — for themselves. This is how America's first... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/enron.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/enron.html Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 In 2001, Enron was the seventh-largest corporation in America, valued at sixty-three billion dollars. Fortune magazine named it America's most innovative company six years in a row. Twenty thousand employees worked in Houston headquarters worth half a billion dollars. CEO Jeff Skilling's net worth was over two hundred million. Then in ninety days Enron filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history... https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/tupperware.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/tupperware.html Sun, 24 May 2026 12:35:31 +0000 On September seventeenth, twenty twenty-four, at five fifteen pm Eastern, Tupperware Brands Corporation filed a Form Eight-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/bitcoin-depot.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/bitcoin-depot.html Wed, 27 May 2026 16:15:03 +0000 On a Monday morning in May twenty twenty-six, every single Bitcoin Depot machine in North America went dark — at the same time. https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/north-fish.html https://bankrupt-giants.pages.dev/pages/north-fish.html Wed, 27 May 2026 17:22:21 +0000 In Poland there is a man worth about seven billion dollars.