Damage to Reputation cited as No.1 Business Risk Aon Global Risk Management survey shows 40% of businesses are unprepared to deal with a major reputational crisis Terence Williams Nothing feeds the news cycle like a company scandal, and with social media and citizen reporting on the rise, serious blows to a company’s reputation and market value can spread in nano-seconds. The likes of BP, Goldman Sachs, Toyota, Nestle, Domino’s Pizza, and locally and more recently Eskom, Capitec, KFC, the Estate Agency Affairs Board and Lonmin are among a host of brands that have taken a reputational hammering in the court of public opinion. While the precise impact of these reputational crises in terms of lost profit and revenue are difficult to quantify, there is no denying that these brands have all suffered varying degrees of quantifiable financial loss, and face the onerous task of rebuilding the reputations that in many instances have taken decades to establish.  In view of such ...