But on the home front, the embarrassments have been more noticeable than the successes.
More often, consumer embarrassment has been the pressing concern for Combe's advertising and marketing divisions.
This embarrassment has been overtaken by the affair of the sign language interpreter translating, among others, Barack Obama into what turned out to be gibberish.
While every big league has had its betting scandals, the N.B.A.'s embarrassment has been the most recent and the most lurid.
One source of potential embarrassment has been averted, however, after UEFA said it had no issues with the FA's new minimum five-match ban for racism on the pitch despite announcing its own 10-game sanction.
The embarrassment has been acute, the political pressure to staunch the financial bleeding intense.Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, has already come close to putting her job on the line if the NHS does not return to financial balance in 2006-07.
Since then, we are told by Rebecca L. Spang in this pleasingly spiced history of the restaurant, any occasion when the bringing of a check has led to surprise or embarrassment has been called "le quart d'heure de Rabelais," Rabelais's quarter-hour.
Because there's no need to talk to anyone or to explain what you want the money for, or why you're short of cash, much stigma and embarrassment has been removed from the exchange, and the service is becoming increasingly popular, despite the very high interest rates.
But Shell's biggest embarrassment has been its North America operations.
The solar industry's highest-profile embarrassment has been the $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar project in the Mojave Desert, owned by NRG Energy and Google.
