1. A matter of life and death for companies

In 1990, traces of benzene, a carcinogenic substance, were discovered by an American laboratory in thirteen bottles of Perrier. Who was behind this discovery? Was it pure chance, a routine check, a malicious competitor or an employee seeking revenge? We don't really know, but the consequences are enormous, even if the health risk is infinitesimal: 280 million bottles recalled in the United States, at a cost of over one billion francs. The cause of the contamination was human error: the failure to replace a filter that purified the carbon dioxide from the source.

That year, Perrier became the world's leading mineral water brand. Weakened by this crisis, at a time when purity was at the heart of its marketing strategy, Perrier was bought out by Nestlé in 1992. An episode not unlike the affair of falsified diesel emissions tests by Volkswagen, which had made trust...