litigation proceedings of other government cock ups (corporate cock-ups seldom hit the press) -- let's take the NHS project. State sponsored litigation here is against CSC and Fujitsu, with BT and Accenture settled some time back. At stake is about 2Bn. That is two thousand million for any Americans in the room. Costs are running at many tens of millions so far. Any state failure to win can be measured in hundreds of millions for the tax payer. In addition, if you happen to have a pension (remember those "financial protection policies" for when you retire) then think of the costs associated with various failed outsourcing deals in the top investment portfolios. Let's not bother with who is to blame -- client or supplier, but all shareholders need to know about these failures of management and executives in huge outsourcing deals, such as service provider and previous pension-fund sweetheart G4S. Now there is at least 200m of costs to be written off, never mind the brand impact; AstraZeneca's fight with IBM -- final costs undisclosed but it was a 900m contract; the Thompson Reuters cancellation of the 500m Fujitsu deal and still subject to ongoing legal action; bad software upgrades by an outsourcer that made RBS' systems unable to process payments for both individual and business customers hitting NatWest and Ireland's Ulster Bank -- compensation run to millions;  the DWP's  cancellation of the 300m deal with Fujitsu; DBS and IBM's "repeated failure to apply the correct procedure when addressing instability