At some point most executive teams will make a bet-the-company decision.  Sometimes they’ll make the right one and will be handsomely rewarded.  Southwest’s decision in 2007 to hedge against increases in the price of jet fuel proved remarkably prescient. But sometimes the big decision will go horribly wrong. In 2007 AOL and Time Warner finally pulled the plug on the $350 billion 2001 merger that Time Warner chiefs Jeff Bewkes and Gerald Levin later called “the biggest mistake in corporate history.”