Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was an American industrialist, being the founder of the iron and steel industry in the United States. He was also a philanthropist.
At the age of 33, when he had an annual income of $50,000, Carnegie wrote himself a note, “Beyond this never earn, make no effort to increase fortune, but spend the surplus each year for benevolent purposes.” He did not keep this resolution, but as his fortune grew so did his concern for using his fortune to provide greater opportunity for all.
In the brief paper “The Gospel of Wealth,” first published in the North American Review in 1899, Carnegie stated his doctrine concerning the responsibility of the wealthy individual to society. Wealthy people, he believed, should use the fortune they have earned to provide greater opportunity for all and to increase knowledge of humankind and of the universe.
Carnegie began to practice his own doctrine in the 1880s with the building of libraries, the particular philanthropy with which Carnegie’s name is especially associated. During his lifetime Carnegie gave more than $350 million to various educational, cultural, and peace institutions, many of which bear his name.
The consciousness and giving nature of Andrew Carnegie stands in sharp contrast to the Masters of the Universe of modern investment banks.
Since 2007, as the financial crises has played out, there has been much criticism of investment banking and calls for more ethical behavior by investment banks and investment bankers. In my opinion, the criticism has been just and valid.
A friend of mine who had been running a mid sized investment bank but was forced to leave told me that his organization had become impossible to steer, as the high paid bankers behaved as if they played a game where each new years individual bonus to the top performers, based on risky deal making, was higher than what they possibly could earn for the rest of their lifetime in any other profession. Thus behavior was decided by greed.
The question then is, why should they have showed restraint as just one more year of profits and bonuses made them each more money than a lifetime of earnings in any other career?
On a macro level, the financial crises has shown that ethical failures can have profound consequences on the value of an investment bank and its reputation, and given the importance of banks in the macro economy, consequences on the national and multi-national economic balance as a whole.
The crises destroyed century old multinational institutions such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. The failure of individuals can become the failure of the entire institution where they are employed.
The collapse of Barclays Bank due to Nick Lessons gambling with futures trading on the Tokyo index was an early example in modern times. The loss of more than $2 billion on complex derivative positions in a small trading unit at JP Morgan in London last week was the most recent example, and is the direct inspiration to the writing of this blog post.
The JP Morgan trading loss was revealed in regulatory filing and will dent the company’s profits, although it still expects to make about $4 billion this quarter. The loss numbers are staggering, but it is only in times of system failure that these events pulls a large bank to the brink of collapse. It is almost as if the industry has come to expect these enormous mistakes and accepts the high stake risk taking.
By understanding that high paid bankers behaved as if they played a game where each new years individual bonus to the top performers, based on risky deal making, was higher than what they possibly could earn for the rest of their lifetime in any other profession, we have the explanation of the risk taking. However how can such barriers of ethics be breached?
Investment bankers typically have compulsory training in legal and regulatory compliance, but not in ethics. Compliance, by definition is concerned with complying with existing laws and regulations, and every investment bank has a Compliance Department and sophisticated processes to ensure this happens.
Ethics on the other hand is a broader subject, and is fundamentally about discerning what is right in a given situation, and acting on it.
Raphael’s School of Athens and the Wisdom of the Ancients.
The Greek philosophers were the first to define Western Philosophy, the rational and critical inquiry into basic principles. Philosophy is often divided into four main branches: metaphysics, the investigation of ultimate reality; epistemology, the study of the origins, validity, and limits of knowledge; ethics, the study of the nature of morality and judgment; and aesthetics, the study of the nature of beauty in the fine arts.
There is naturally some blurring between compliance and ethics . Both are concerned with standards in doing business. However, whereas compliance is primarily concerned with a finite body of regulation and legislation, ethics deals with the underlying nature, intent and result of a situation or action.
Every situation in investment banking has ethical connotations, but many are outside the areas governed by compliance. As a result, much business takes place without moral scrutiny.
In practice, it is perfectly possible for an investment banker to structure a non-compliant deal to avoid a specific compliance problem, and in the process ignore any significant ethical question that the deal raises. The financial crises of recent years has exposed the dangers of this approach.
Ethics, therefore, involves going beyond the legal requirements and rules imposed by regulatory bodies to determine what is right and what is wrong when making a business decision.
I believe it is about time for business schools and the financial industry to provide training on how to make a judgment about likely outcomes to asses whether a decision is right or wrong.
A greater awareness of ethics in the investment banks has the potential to change corporate culture and have considerable impact on specific abusive practices and on individual investment bankers whose ethical standards are poor.
Successful investment bankers must be focused and determined. They do not routinely break existing laws or corporate policy when it is made clear. If there is a requirement for higher ethical standards then successful investment bankers should be able to respond accordingly.
Who knows, maybe a higher focus on ethics may even make some of them follow Andrew Carnegies example. Strong individual examples in civil society can provide the drive and glue to greater purpose development, as we have written about in another recent blog.
