The year 2022 was a chaotic one for companies. Twitter's ownership passed on to Elon Musk, who initiated wide-ranging layoffs and work culture and policy changes. FTX, once a trusted crypto company, imploded under Sam Bankman-Fried's leadership. In India, a CEO advised youngsters to work 18 hours a day, drawing backlash.

As we near the end of 2022, here is a look at the bosses who courted controversy this year.

Elon Musk 

The Tesla CEO dominated headlines this year by first announcing his bid to buy Twitter and then trying to backout of the deal. The company took him to court and eventually, he had to honour the agreement.

Soon after taking off, he sacked Twitter's top executives. Mass layoffs followed, that affected nearly half of the social network's 7,500 employees. Those who stayed were told to commit to a hardcore work culture.

Out on the social site, confusion prevailed as Twitter policy changes gave rise to impostor accounts. Musk's decision to reinstate accounts like Donald Trump was also criticised. Elon Musk has publicly clashed with a growing number of Twitter employees about the state of the platform, and fired at least one of them in a tweet, in an unusually visible sign of corporate chaos after his $44 billion takeover of the influential company.

Musk slashed half of Twitter’s staff and, reportedly, many of its contractors, in a manner that many critics have described as slapdash and could put the platform at risk. Musk’s retribution for those who disagree with him also comes as he has cemented his control over the company by pushing out Twitter’s top execs and eliminating its board of directors.

Twitter’s new chief Elon Musk says that the micro-blogging site will delete up to 1.5 billion accounts to free up space. However, if you are a regular Twitter user and you tweet quite frequently, do not fret as your account will not be hampered. Musk has said that only the accounts that are inactive for years together or users who have logged in for a long time will be axed from the platform.

Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried was the boy-wonder face of crypto: A 30-year-old who founded one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, a celebrated philanthropist worth an estimated $16 billion, and a major Democratic donor who quickly found favor in Washington. By Friday, he was at the center of an epic flameout that left his empire and his image as an uncannily sharp, altruistic billionaire in ruins.

In the annals of crypto disasters, the tale of Bankman-Fried may go down as one of the most jaw-dropping. He resigned from his crypto exchange, FTX, as it collapsed from a domino effect of a surge in customers trying to withdraw their funds, and the company filed for bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Bankman-Fried may have illegally taken about $10 billion in FTX customers’ funds for his trading firm, Alameda Research, whose future is also in peril. And Bankman-Fried is now worth close to nothing.

“Look, I screwed up,” the fallen crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried told a conference in New York on Wednesday, but he maintained he “didn’t ever try to commit fraud” and was “shocked” by the collapse of his businesses.

With glassy eyes, at times visibly shaking, Bankman-Fried appeared via video conference from a nondescript room in the Bahamas. He told the New York Times DealBook summit he was “deeply sorry about what happened” but consistently said he did not have a full picture of what was going on within the various branches of FTX, his now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, and its offshoots.

Bankman-Fried resigned as head of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange when it declared bankruptcy earlier this month. The true fallout of the collapse is still emerging. FTX owes $3.1bn (£2.57bn) to its largest creditors, assets have disappeared, law enforcement and regulators are circling and Bankman-Fried’s free-handed largesse to the US political elite is set to cause a firestorm in Washington.

Elizabeth Holmes

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to over 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in her blood testing start-up that was once valued at $9bn (£7.5bn).

The former Silicon Valley star falsely claimed the technology could diagnose disease with just a few drops of blood.

Holmes, 38, who is pregnant, tearfully told the court she felt "deep pain" for those misled by the scam.

She was found guilty in January after a three-month trial.

Holmes is expected to appeal against the sentence, which was handed down on Friday in a California court.

Once hailed as the "next Steve Jobs", she was at one time said to be the world's youngest self-made billionaire.

She launched Theranos after dropping out of Stanford University at age 19, and its value rose sharply after the company claimed it could bring about a revolution in disease diagnosis.

But the technology Holmes touted did not work and - awash in lawsuits - the company was dissolved by 2018.

At Holmes' trial in San Jose, California, prosecutors said she knowingly misled doctors and patients about Theranos' flagship product - the Edison machine - which the company claimed could detect cancer, diabetes and other conditions using just a few drops of blood.

They also accused Holmes of vastly exaggerating the firm's performance to its financial backers.

Jurors ultimately found her guilty on four counts of fraud, with a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. But they found her not guilty on four other charges, and failed to reach a verdict on three more.

Before Judge Edward Davila issued his sentence on Friday, Holmes read a speech to the court in which she tearfully apologised to investors and patients.

"I am devastated by my failings. I have felt deep pain for what people went through, because I failed them," she said.

"I regret my failings with every cell of my body," she continued.

The judge referred to Holmes as a "brilliant" entrepreneur, and told her: "Failure is normal. But failure by fraud is not OK."

Silicon Valley is a place where fortunes can be made and squandered. It's not unusual for investors to lose big sums of money. 

It's also not unusual for founders to make grandiose claims about their tech. 

What is different about Holmes' case, though, is that Theranos' unwinding actually led to fraud charges that stuck. 

It is notoriously difficult to get successful prosecutions in cases of white-collar fraud in the US. 

When investors lose money, they often simply write it off, or pursue compensation privately. 

Holmes' punishment is a warning for Silicon Valley executives that there are real consequences for misleading investors.  

This isn't a slap on the wrist, it's significant time in prison.

Shantanu Deshpande

Bombay Shaving Company CEO Shantanu Deshpande has apologised for his "don't do rona dhona advise" to freshers in which he had told new comers to work 18 hours a day. He clarified that his message was taken out of context but admitted that the post could have been worded better.

"To those who were hurt by my post - apologies for the same. I recognise the need for nuance and context," he wrote in a LinkedIn post.

"To those who sent nasty 'your son is a slave owner' messages to my parents and thousands like those - You won," he added.

An Indian CEO was criticized after he suggested that new recruits at any job work 18 hours a day for the first four to five years of their career.

Shantanu Deshpande, the founder of Bombay Shaving Company, asked young workers to "worship" work and avoid "rona-dhona (cribbing)" in an online post.

Angry reactions on social media said he was promoting a "toxic work culture".

India has strong labor laws, but activists have said officials need to do more to implement them strictly.

In 2020, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy also faced criticism for suggesting that Indians work for a minimum of 64 hours a week for two to three years to compensate for the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus lockdown.

The LinkedIn Workforce Confidence Index released in 2020 said two in five working professionals in India were experiencing increased stress and anxiety.

In his LinkedIn post on Tuesday, Mr. Deshpande said it was "too early" for young people to consider maintaining a work-life balance at the start of their careers.

One Twitter user said Mr. Deshpande was justifying a "toxic work culture" at a time when "mass layoffs by Indian start-ups has become a norm."

Another user pointed out that Mr. Deshpande had not said he would "pay extra" to people who work longer hours.

"Companies have a tendency to exploit people who do [work long hours]. In many cases leading to early burnout, ending in people jeopardizing their career," the user wrote.

Following the widespread criticism of his comments, Mr. Deshpande added a caveat to his post.

"Yikes, so much hate for 18-hour days. It's a proxy for 'giving your all and then some'," he wrote.

He also said those wondering about the work culture at his company were welcome to talk to his employees.

Mr Deshpande's comments come at a time when the term "quiet quitting" has taken off on social media. The term means doing only what your job demands and nothing more. It started with a video by an American TikTokker who advised "work is not your life".

The BBC's Perisha Kudhail wrote that the overall movement may have its origins in China, where the now-censored hashtag #tangping, meaning "lie flat", was used in protest against the long-hours culture.

Ashneer Grover

Fintech unicorn BharatPe has accused its ousted managing director Ashneer Grover, and his family of embezzling company funds to pay for personal expenses, including rent, plane tickets, and skincare products, as well as funnelling money to fake vendors and recruitment services.

In a civil lawsuit filed in the Delhi high court on Thursday, BharatPe has sought ₹88.67 crore in damages from Grover, his wife Madhuri Jain Grover, and family members. It said Grover and his family created fictitious vendors in Panipat to provide services to BharatPe, raised fake invoices and overcharged the firm for recruitment.

The payments firm also filed a criminal complaint against Grover and his family, including Deepak Gupta, Suresh Jain and Shwetank Jain, with the Delhi Police. BharatPe is seeking damages from Grover and family, including a claim for payment made against the invoices of non-existent vendors, amounting to ₹71.7 crore; payments made to vendors purportedly providing recruitment services totalling ₹7.6 crore; ₹5 crore in damages for loss of reputation to the company caused by tweets and other statements made by Grover and his family members.

BharatPe claimed Grover has been running a “vicious campaign" against the company on social media.“The civil complaint is for recovery of losses BharatPe has faced because of the acts of Ashneer, his wife and his family. This is one team—headed by Madhuri Jain Grover, advised and guided by Grover, and then others—BharatPe is going against," a person close to the matter said, seeking anonymity.

Grover and Madhuri Jain Grover’s counsel said his client was not served a notice and that “they only came to know about this through print media today".

Mint was the first to report BharatPe was filing a case against Grover and his family.

The Delhi high court asked Grover and his family to respond to the company’s charges within two weeks. The next hearing will be in the first week of January. Law firm Trilegal is representing BharatPe in the civil suit filed in the high court.

BharatPe has filed a criminal complaint against Grover and his family with the Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police, alleging criminal breach of trust, conspiracy, cheating, forgery and destruction of evidence.

“For EOW to assign an investigating officer, then investigation, charge sheet filed based on the investigation, and for an actual criminal trial to start may take more than a year. The punishment in the offences that BharatPe has made out is close to 10 years imprisonment," the person added.

“BharatPe has been preparing to file a case against Grover and his family for six months. It took the opinions of senior counsels and then went ahead with this. The criminal complaint has 2,600 annexures," another person added.

MZM Legal is working with BharatPe on the criminal complaint. “BharatPe has initiated civil and criminal action against Grover, Madhuri Jain Grover and other connected parties for various claims, including misappropriation of company funds. As the matter is sub judice, we have no further comment," a BharatPe spokesperson said.