Liz Truss, Bill Hwang and Elon Musk: The 2022 awards you don’t want to win

By: and

Add as a preferred source on Google
Social media platform, X, fined 610,500 AUS dollars for failing to fully explain how it tackled child sexual exploitation content.
X would not reveal how many staff remained on the trust and safety team after Elon Musk took over

We started the year with Boris Johnson in Downing Street and optimism for a Covid-19 rebound. It didn’t quite turn out that way – and here’s our pick of the best of the best (or worst of the worst) of 2022…

THE MUM OF THE YEAR AWARD

This year hasn’t been smooth sailing for e-commerce retail group THG. But, at least founder Matt Moulding can be assured that his family has his back. Moulding’s mother emailed The Sunday Times columnist Oliver Shah to criticise media coverage of the retailer’s torrid share price performance. “You must lead very dreary lives in your dead-end jobs,” she said.

THE BAD ENERGY AWARD

Ovo Energy was forced to apologise in January after it advised customers to do star jumps, cuddle pets and eat porridge to cut down energy bills and stay warm. But the winner- by a distance – is HSBC, forced to apologise after the advertising regulator took aim at their environmental claims.

Nick Read is moving on to pastures new
Nick Read is moving on to pastures new

THE I PROBABLY WOULDN’T HAVE SAID THAT AWARD

Early in 2022 Vodafone chief exec Nick Read told investors that the whole telecoms industry was going through shareholder destruction thanks to there being too much competition. Vodafone’s share price understandably took another beating thanks to the boss offering a sell-side thesis, and Read was out the door by the end of the year.

THE WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT AWARD

Called ‘Hairy Plotter’ by the New York Post, Sam Bankman-Fried’s decline from cock of the walk to (deleted – ed.) was swift. FTX’s collapse will surely push politicians and regulators to get a handle on the crypto industry – and persuade celebs to be more careful on their partnerships.

THE U-TURN AWARD

After boosting his stake in Twitter in April, Elon Musk said he would be buying the social media firm for a whopping $44bn. He later backtracked on this move, moaning about the bot count and claiming he had been misled during the deal process – kicking off a major legal battle with Twitter. The Tesla founder then changed his mind AGAIN, stating he WOULD be buying the company for the original price. Since then, it’s been… well, you know.

FORECAST OF THE YEAR AWARD

The Bank of England continued to use the word ‘transitory’ to describe inflation at the start of the year, with their February monetary policy report warning that price hikes might end up “around 7 per cent” in spring before falling back. Of course, it hit more than 11 per cent by the end of the year, and the Bank’s failure to get ahead of inflation helped put sterling on a log flume throughout much of the year. Mercifully, Andrew Bailey et al seem to have got their heads around the issue now. Whether mortgage holders are so thrilled is a different question.

The lightbulb has gone off at the Bank of England now Threadneedle St has taken inflation seriously
The lightbulb has gone off at the Bank of England now Threadneedle St has taken inflation seriously

THE DR. PEPPER AWARD

Liz Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng delivered a mini-budget full of goodies that, ordinarily, Canada would have loved. Unfortunately, they did it at the worst time possible – after bunging £60bn on a plan to keep us all warm this winter – and acquainted us all with the exciting word of the LDI fund. London’s economic meltdown lasted for a few days – much like Liz Truss’ premiership, which conked out after just shy of seven weeks. Britain’s third Prime Minister of the year, Rishi Sunak, has done his best to restore market confidence, but has so far done little for his party’s polling numbers.

THE ‘YOU FORGOT THIS WAS THIS YEAR, DIDN’T YOU?’ AWARD

Many politicians have faced sex scandals, but it was 2022 that bought MP Neil Parish being caught watching porn on his mobile in the House of Commons. Parish claimed he was searching for information on tractors and got distracted. It’s an excuse…

AND FINALLY – THE SAM BANKMAN-FRIED ‘WE F***ED UP’ AWARD

Corporate scandals and blunders continued in 2022, serving up a whole host of nominees for this award. It was recently revealed that Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son personally owes the bank $5bn because of losses on the lender’s tech bets. “Hold my beer,” says founder of Archegos Capital Management Bill Hwang. The Archegos founder lost some $20bn in a matter of days. He has since been hit with multiple fraud charges, with the US SEC alleging that he “propped up a $36 billion house of cards by engaging in a constant cycle of manipulative trading, lying to banks to obtain additional capacity, and then using that capacity to engage in still more manipulative trading.” If there was one big f**k up this year, we think Hwang wins this award comfortably.