A nitpick: I don't like how financials get lumped in with industrials in these sorts of things; The size of total assets is not an apples-to-apples comparison. I think biggest bankruptcies by number of employees would be interesting for example.
This chart is terrible - it only plots 20 points and is just loaded with what Tufte calls "Chart Junk."Sure the sinking boats look kind of cool but seeing them drawn in multiple colors actually hides interesting info - no major bankruptcies from 1991-2001. The x axis is not used at all. While it looks pretty this could be a counter-example for good data visualization.
The multiple colors represents sector, and looking at all that green you can large finical companies often die.
I think a more interesting chart would be companies that lost 90% of their value in one year as a scatter plot, with the same color codes. (year vs lost value)
