For years, a wave of online competitors eroded Zagat's formidable empire of quotation-mark-happy reviews of restaurants and bars around the world.
Even as the University of Florida cuts faculty and budgets, its athletic director, Jeremy Foley, has been expanding a formidable empire dedicated to winning championships, not just in football and men's basketball but in 19 other sports.
With that in mind, I set out the other night for the Flatiron district and the restaurant Craft, the linchpin of the chef, restaurateur and reality-TV star Tom Colicchio's formidable empire.
She has built a formidable empire of women-run, Gandhian-style cooperatives — 100 at last count — some providing child care for working mothers, others selling sesame seeds to Indian food-processing firms — all modeled after the Gandhian ideal of self-sufficiency but also advancing modern ambitions.
For Wilpon, who was roundly criticized in recent days for the harsh comments he made about his players in The New Yorker, the need to take on a minority investor is a painful realization that his once-formidable empire is in dire condition.
Churches have become formidable economic empires.
In the meantime, contractors have been complaining with increasing anxiety about the failure of Dubai developers to pay their bills.Treading on toesIn trying to unpick the tangle of Dubai's corporate liabilities Mr Sheikh ran the risk of offending some of the powerful protégés of the ruler who built up formidable business empires during the boom years.
When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, the family escaped to Switzerland, but its extensive art collection was seized and its once formidable industrial empire bankrupted.
But last week, sitting inside the Birsa Munda jail in Ranchi, it seemed he was perfectly capable of managing his still-formidable political empire.
The Tea Party and its allies have been funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, and rightwing money has expanded a formidable conservative media empire – from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal, and talk radio with tens of millions of followers.
