Building on his previous article 'Stewardship Lessons from News Corp' Tomorrow's Company Founder Director Mark Goyder assesses the lessons that can be learned from the appearance of Rupert and James Murdoch in front of a Parliamentary Select Committee.  

In 2002 Mark Goyder wrote "Lessons from Enron". It was a story about the culture of fear and greed at the top of the company, and how Enron's non-execs, who were there to hold them to account, failed to restrain it.  In this article Mark looks at the similarities between Enron's corporate culture and that of News Corp, in the light of recent events. He asks what lessons can be learned from these failings and spells out the need for a greater measure of stewardship throughout the investment chain.  

"All of us whose money is going into the system need to be given the opportunity to exercise some simple choices about stewardship. A consumer who walks down the supermarket aisle can choose to buy Fair Trade coffee, and they know what that means. The same should happen when we look at products offered us by fund managers: we should be able to tell the stewardship content," – Mark Goyder, Founder Director of Tomorrow’s CompanyAn article published in The Guardian newspaper (on 21/6/11) - featuring contributions and comment from Mark Goyder - sets out the expectation that Business Secretary Vince Cable will use his speech to the Association of British Insurers on Wednesday (22/6/11) to renew his calls for UK plc to take a more long term view of its activities.

The Good Governance Forum supports achieving business success through improving the quality of corporate governance by providing tools, resources and other instruments for chairs, company secretaries and other key people who drive the quality of board performance. It works with regulators and others to help create the best possible environment for good corporate governance.

Tomorrow's Company has played an important and leading role in developing the argument for stewardship, and in so doing has helped to create the conditions which have led to the establishment of the Stewardship Code in the UK.   We are now building on this impact, to establish a new momentum for stewardship and understanding of what this means in practice - by tackling both the demand side (setting out  'Why Stewardship Matters' and developing toolkits to help each participant in the system to be more effective in their pursuit of stewardship) and the supply side (working with fund managers, investment consultants and FRC to develop the “stewardship spectrum” and establishing criteria through which excellence in stewardship might be identified and rewarded in the market). Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false"...