He was the Icarus of Bling: the eighties high street baron whose jewellery empire straddled the world — until a single joke ended the party..
He was the Icarus of Bling: the eighties high street baron whose jewellery empire straddled the world — until a single joke ended the party..
Gerald Ratner doesn’t spend much time on Twitter these days. But it’s not the echo chamber, or the noxious debate, or the latent threat of cancellation at every turn that keeps him away. It’s his name. Once the shimmering moniker above the world’s greatest jewellery empire, those six letters now mean something else entirely, as Twitter will eagerly remind you. In business textbooks across the world, ‘Doing a Ratner’ has become shorthand for a corporate or public blunder of catastrophic proportions — a foot-in-mouth moment of forehead-slapping calamity. Needless to say, these days it trends all too frequently in hashtag form.
Gerald Ratner doesn’t spend much time on Twitter these days. But it’s not the echo chamber, or the noxious debate, or the latent threat of cancellation at every turn that keeps him away. It’s his name. Once the shimmering moniker above the world’s greatest jewellery empire, those six letters now mean something else entirely, as Twitter will eagerly remind you. In business textbooks across the world, ‘Doing a Ratner’ has become shorthand for a corporate or public blunder of catastrophic proportions — a foot-in-mouth moment of forehead-slapping calamity. Needless to say, these days it trends all too frequently in hashtag form.
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| Clubhouse Membership | |
|---|---|
| Two Magazines per yearDelivered to your door | |
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| Membership Cardto redeem all the perks. | |
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| Weekly newsletter Straight to your inbox | |
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