In 2008 Tomorrows Company published “Tomorrow’s Owners – stewardship of Tomorrow’s Company”. This was a review of the principles of good ownership from private equity and family business to institutional investment in listed companies. The report concluded that shareholders had four roles – being a member, a provider of finance, a trader of shares and a steward, but that in listed companies it was this fourth role that was being neglected. The publication of this report coincided with the failure of the banks in October 2008. Sir David Walker picked up the theme of stewardship in his 2009 report for the UK government on the governance of banks and other financial institutions. Here we set out Tomorrow’s Company’s definition of stewardship and the four principles that make up effective stewardship.    

On Tuesday the 24th May 2011 Paul Walsh Chief Executive Officer, Diageo plc, gave this presentation at the RSA. In it he set out a new agenda for business - to prioritise sustainable value or fail.     A transcript and a video of Paul's powerful speech are linked in. 

 In November 2009 AISEC along with Kairos Futures conducted a survey of over 3,000 young people from around 122 countries about their views on climate change. The results were telling. 73% of respondents believe climate change to be a greater threat to society than the war or terrorism, and nearly all see their main responsibility as being to leave the world in better shape than their parents did. Here is a run down of their findings.

People around the world are embracing Green Capitalism because it is now possible to create a higher standard of living for every person and community throughout the world, by shifting from resource-wasting industrial development to resource saving industrialism. In the 21st Century, people, places, and organizations will literally “get richer by becoming greener,” earning more money by using fewer resources and reusing more.

Few writers have devoted more time to the everalsting conflict between Good and Evil, War and Peace, Love and Violence than Leo Tolstoy and it was in helping a friend compile a book on Malcolm Muggeridge that I first discovered the story of the Green Stick.  What I  also learned of Muggeridge was his endeavours in the 1930s to report on Stalin's man made Famine which he described as  "“one of the most monstrous crimes in history, so terrible that people in the future will scarcely believe it ever happened.”.  It was an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life. One of my favourite extracts from the 1970s TV series Kung Fu, is the scene where two youths report to their master having been robbed. The lesson learned is that "We affirm the good in man through trust and deal with evil through strength". That we should not seek reward in striving for an ideal. but that trust can lead to love.  Our own experience was to discover the story which was to become know as 'Death...