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Bad Buying

How organizations waste billions through failures, frauds and f*ck-ups

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The Latest from Bad Buying

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Beware the Fake CFO!

I have mixed feelings about Ove Arup. One the one hand, they are an engineering company with a strong track record, great achievements, and one of my best friends worked for them for many years. On the other hand, they wrote me a nasty letter…
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UK Public Procurement – Six Months In, How Is Labour Doing?

The election of Donald Trump in the US was one of the biggest global news stories of 2024, but our election back in July was significant for the UK, as voters rejected the Conservative government which had been in charge for some 14 years.…

Peter Smith’s Bad Buying Podcast

The Bad Buying Playlist

With this Bad Buying website we aim to shine a fearless spotlight on the things that go wrong with corporate buying and procurement – failures, frauds and f**k-ups, as I like to say. That does also mean highlighting and celebrating some of the positive ways in which organisations can avoid Bad Buying, as well as sticking the boot in when criticism is deserved. Fraud and corruption are also prevalent in the world of buying, and too often public and private sector bodies globally get away with some truly awful buying processes, practices and decisions that rarely get exposed and analysed. We aim to address that, and as any entrepreneur will tell you, we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. So we hope Bad Buying can help in that way too!

(Picture courtesy Justine Stoddart)

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