The View | It takes courage to know when to quit
The decision to de-list Malaysia Airlines is possibly not going far enough, especially in a lost cause
When is the right time to quit?
Yet again we are fortunate to be able to call on sage advice from the actor W.C. Fields, who said: "If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."
News that troubled Malaysia Airlines is to be delisted from the Kuala Lumpur stock exchange by the government-backed Khazanah Nasional wealth fund comes as no surprise, but it may turn out to be an act of quitting that does not go far enough.
There is comfort in the thought that to succeed you need to have experienced loss
Indeed it can be argued that were Malaysia Airlines a purely private company, it might have already given up the ghost. After two fatal air disasters in the space of just four months, it has understandably proved very hard to persuade travellers to opt for this airline. The brand, in other words, has fallen into toxic status.
Whether the company deserves this fate is beside the point, because toxicity is a conclusion not a cause.
Some companies are responsible for their own downfall.
Two prime examples from Britain come to mind, the first being the high street jeweller Ratners, which had half of Britain's retail jewellery market before its founder, Gerald Ratner, gave a notorious speech describing his own goods as "crap".