Ethics and Finance Finding a Moral Compass in Business Today

• Author: Daniel Hardy
• Position: Division Chief IMF Monetary and Capital Markets Department
• Pages: 52

Page 52

Avinash D. Persaud and John Plender: Longtail Publishing Limited, London, 2007, 215 pp., £19.95 (paper).

FINANCIAL markets are often taken to be places in which unbridled self-interest dominates and the participants recognize just one value-money. Each investor wants the best rate of return, each bank wants the highest return on equity, and analysts and traders want the biggest bonus-and everybody will do whatever it takes to get there. Yet financial markets, like society itself, rely on shared ethical standards. Written rules and their enforcement are necessary although, by and large, people and institutions voluntarily constrain themselves. Even when there is little chance of being caught, people do not do certain things they feel are unethical.

Persaud and Plender have written a practical guide to encourage investors and other market participants to abide by ethical standards and to recognize where ethical conflicts may arise. They pointedly avoid philosophical...