Rebuilding Trust in Banks. The Role of Leadership and Governance

Product Description
An outline of the core principles and strategies required to restore the credibility of the global finance industry
Since 2008, the global financial industry has lurched from crisis to crisis, calamity to calamity, resulting in an epic loss of public trust in banking and financial institutions. Rebuilding Trust in Banks argues that this series of disasters have usually been the result failures of leadership and governance, combined with unenforced systems of checks and balances. Often, leaders lose their way, believing their own hype and buying into their own propaganda. The more successful these leaders are initially the greater their self-confidence grows along with the certainty that they’re right. The result is a dangerous hubris with no countervailing power to stop or change reckless, unethical, or self-interested strategies. This book offers a solution, with useful benchmarks for corporate governance and a global perspective.

Features effective best practices for ensuring good corporate governance and responsible leadership in banking and finance
Written by a renowned expert in corporate governance with more than 40 years of experience, particularly in Asia
Intended for corporate leaders and board members in financial companies, as well as regulators, advisors, and students

If banks and other financial institutions truly want to rebuild the trust they once enjoyed, this practical and prescriptive guide offers effective best practices that can—and should—be widely implemented throughout the industry.
From the Inside Flap
Since 2008, the global financial industry has lurched from crisis to crisis, calamity to calamity, scandal to scandal, resulting in an epic loss of public trust in banking and financial institutions. In this groundbreaking book, John Zinkin, an internationally recognized expert in corporate governance, makes a strong case that the global banking crisis was due primarily to a failure of leadership and corporate governance. More importantly, he offers practical solutions for correcting those failures and restoring public trust, not just in banks, but in the capitalist system itself.
Drawing upon recent history and the distant past, Zinkin explains why, without effective corporate governance to balance out and focus the zeal and ambition of effective leaders, sustainable long-term value cannot be created.
Effective leadership, he observes, is morally neutral and can lead to good or bad outcomes. All too often leaders lose sight of their true missions and start believing their own hype. The more successful they are initially, the greater their self-confidence and their certainty in the correctness of their actions. The result is a dangerous hubris with no countervailing power to stop or change their reckless, self-interested behaviour, or to contain the culture of irresponsible risk-taking and unethical conduct engendered and fuelled by their examples.
Taking Napoleon Bonaparte as the benchmark of a "great, bad leader" he explores the stories of four "imperial CEOs" who personify the crisis of leadership currently plaguing the banking industry. These include Merrill Lynch CEO, Stan O'Neal; Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns; Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers; and Royal Bank of Scotland's Fred Goodwin. Like Napoleon, all four were transformational leaders who scaled to great heights before crashing and, in most cases, bringing their firms down with them. From their stories, Zinkin extracts powerful lessons about the major precipitating causes for failures of leadership, and about the paramount importance of good corporate governance, especially in an industry where the temptations for personal gain are so great.
Zinkin isolates the eleven chief characteristics of bad leadership and lays out the seven attributes required of good leaders. And, taking a global perspective, he provides useful benchmarks and best practices for ensuring good corporate governance and responsible leadership