This week, Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, reached a monumental agreement to pay $17 billion in a settlement aimed at concluding a significant trial concerning protections for younger social media users. Though this settlement ranks among the largest in history, it constitutes only a small portion of Meta’s colossal $201 billion revenue from the previous year.
Below, we explore a few other significant corporate settlements that have left their mark on history.
BP and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
British Petroleum (BP) was on the hook for $20 billion in response to the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon incident, which stands as the most severe offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
Announced in 2016, the settlement demanded BP pay $5.5 billion in civil penalties under the Clean Water Act, with additional billions allocated towards repairing environmental damage and settling claims from the five Gulf states and local entities. The payments are scheduled to unfold over approximately 16 years.
Enron and its massive accounting scandal
Enron, once the nation’s seventh-largest company, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001, after years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions of dollars in debt or make failing ventures appear profitable. The energy company’s collapse put more than 5,000 people out of work and wiped out more than $2 billion in employee pensions.
Twenty-four Enron executives, including former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, were convicted for their roles in the fraud.
A class-action lawsuit led to the recovery of more than $7 billion in funds.
WorldCom hid falling profits in one of the worst cases of accounting fraud
WorldCom Inc. collapsed and went into bankruptcy in 2002 following revelations of an $11 billion accounting fraud that included pressure from top executives on subordinates to inflate numbers to make the company seem more profitable. The collapse caused losses to stockholders, including those who had invested through retirement plans.
In 2005, the company agreed to pay shareholders about $750 million in cash and stock, while major banks and accounting firms settled for about $6 billion.
WorldCom’s former CEO, Bernie Ebbers was convicted in New York in 2005 on securities fraud and other charges and received a 25-year sentence. He died in 2020, just over a month after his early release from prison.
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After its collapse, WorldCom reemerged under a new name, MCI. It was taken over by Verizon and relocated its operations to Ashburn, Virginia.
JPMorgan, Bank of America and the housing bets that shook the world
JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $13 billion in a landmark settlement in 2013. The firm acknowledged that it misled investors about the quality of risky mortgage-backed securities ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.
The agreement also included settlements with New York, California and other states.
JPMorgan was among the major banks that sold securities that plunged in value when the housing market collapsed in 2006 and 2007. Those losses triggered a financial crisis that pushed the economy into the worst recession since the 1930s.
A year later, Bank of America reached a $16.65 billion settlement with the government over the same issue. Its deal called for the bank, the second-largest in the U.S., to pay a $5 billion cash penalty, another $4.6 billion in remediation payments and provide about $7 billion in relief to struggling homeowners.
Johnson & Johnson and the marathon legal fight over talc
Johnson & Johnson agreed in July to pay $5.5 billion after fighting lawsuits for almost two decades over talc products that plaintiffs claimed had caused ovarian cancer.
The drugmaker, which has been fighting talc-related lawsuits for more than a decade, said that the settlement is conditioned on at least 95% of remaining claimants participating.
A U.S. bankruptcy court judge denied a $9 billion settlement proposed by company subsidiary Red River Talc last year that would have been one of the biggest mass tort settlements in history.
Johnson & Johnson decided not to appeal that ruling and instead fight on in court.
As part of the proposed settlement, Johnson & Johnson will make an initial payment of no more than $3 billion next year. It has no additional payments due until 2028.
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