20 Business Decisions That Lost Companies Billions

On New Year’s Day 1962, the Beatles auditioned for Decca Records. The label chose Brian Poole and the Tremeloes instead. One famous explanation—that executive Dick Rowe declared “guitar groups are on the way out”—may be apocryphal or at least misattributed, and the Beatles’ audition itself was hardly their finest performance. Still, Decca indisputably passed on the group that soon became the biggest band in the world. Not every rejection costs billions directly, but few lost opportunities became this culturally gigantic.