Lessons to Learn From These 5 CEO Blunders

William Blake once said, “The errors of a wise man make your rule, Rather than the perfections of a fool”. The saying is undoubtedly true! But as they say, it is not always necessary to commit a mistake individually and then learn a lesson out of it. In business world it is said that “good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” Only people like Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Ratterman experienced if the saying goes correct or not. Here are some dumbest business mistakes of the year 2012 made by few wisest people in the world, as listed by DailyFinance.com.

5. The Facebook fiasco

The Facebook IPO blunder must have enlightened the company CEO Mark Zuckerberg to think twice before he reaches any final decision. Mark’s instinct to bring more shares to the market and push the IPO price loaded the IPO offering with hitches till the edge.

Though Facebook attained $16 billion of fresh cash but regrettably it couldn’t fetch too many “shares” as it was expected.  Furthermore a cluster of the company shareholders also filed a lawsuit against Facebook complaining that many of the secret information were leaked to big banks prior to the IPO.

For now the IPO blunder is cooled off but it served well to remind investors about the pros and cons of the companies changing form secondary market to publicly traded platforms.

4. Joe Ratterman, CEO of BATS Global Markets
BATS Global Markets company tag line suggests “making markets better”, but unfortunately the company failed to make a better position for itself on its first day of trading. BATS Global Markets is a stock exchange located in Lenexa, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City.

The company tried to go public on March 23, 2012 as the first listing on its own exchange, and eradicated the IPO the same day because of a devastating anomaly in the company's trading systems. The disaster resulted in BATS’ stock price rolling down from the original $16 offering price to as low as 4¢ per share.

It took quit a time for BATS board of directors to settle down, but later it was decided to split the roles of chairman and CEO. Earlier Joe Ratterman had apprehended both roles.

3. Brian Dunn, former CEO, Best Buy

It is always suggested by doctors to keep one’s personal and professional life separate. Though the suggestion is mainly to maintain healthy relation ships and have quality family time, but at times even personal affairs of executives seem to become a pain for the companies.

Chief Executive Brian Dunn resigned unexpectedly in the midst of what the company depicts as a check out into his "personal behavior," adding together to the woes of the hunching consumer-electronics retailer, whose big-box business model is shattering.

Best Buy shares mounted after the declaration, but then slipped into negative province and closed down 5.9 percent, at $21.32. They have mislaid more than 55 percent of their value in the precedent five years. The company misery further prolongs as their stiff competitor Amazon.com weakened big-box retailers' rates and converted them into nothing more than mere showrooms.

2. Mark Pincus, CEO, Zynga

If there is an award for the biggest gaffes made, Mark Pincus will definitely top among the nominees. Pincus founded Zynga.org in October 2009. Zynga started trading on NASDAQ December 16, 2011 in the tag ZNGA. Though initially the share prices reached $14.50 from $10, but suddenly the price slipped to $2.09 in 2012.

Just weeks before Zynga's quarterly report "farmed" about half of the market value out of Zynga's stock, Pincus plunked off 16 million shares from his personal stock. And the pain doesn’t seem to end here. Business Insider reported that the social game maker has been near to tears with executives leaving the company and complaining about lack of strategy and fragile schemes.

 Currently, Pincus has dazed up the company's management, in part to frame up for executives leaving and in part to restructure the company to tackle slipped chances in mobile gaming.

1. Sean Menke, former CEO, Pinnacle Airlines

No one except Sean Menke, former CEO of Pinnacle Airlines can top the list. Pinnacle Airlines is an American airline, which is a subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines Corporation. Though Sean suggested 5% permanent pay cut for all pilots to prevent the company from filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but it seems Sean forgot that he too can be in the “sack list”. Just within less than ten days after Sean Menk was offered a hike of 60 percent pay raise the company had to opt for filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Pinnacle Spokesman Joe Williams said, "We’re examining every aspect of our business to find opportunities to reduce costs – this includes partner contracts, vendor contracts and other areas of the business including facility carrying costs," as quoted by bizjournal.com.