With their book Greed and Corporate Failure: The Lessons From Recent Disasters, Stewart Hamilton and Alicia Micklethwait make a valuable contribution to the analysis of corporate meltdowns.

One of their key ideas is that the media's analysis of the great scandals has been wrong. As they say in the preface, "It has been convenient for many to pass off the recent spate of corporate failures as accounting scandals and frauds".

But they argue, companies that "collapse in a wave of accounting scandals" as Sherron Watkins predicted Enron would, don't fail for reasons that are that different from most other companies. By examining the collapses of Barings, Allied Irish, Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Marconi, Swissair, Royal Ahold, and Parmalat, the authors show that the root causes of failures are "surprisingly few and common to most cases".

Overly-aggressive expansion, particularly through mergers and acquisitions, weak internal controls, greed, and ineffective boards are at the root of most corporate disasters. Through the use of compelling and recent case studies, short enough to be interesting, Hamilton and Micklethwait have written a must-read for anyone hoping to understand corporate failure.