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.    

Tomorrow's Company have a long history of looking at how the financial services work as part of an overall system and where the weaknesses are, major publications include Tomorrow's Global Company (2007), Restoring Trust (2004) and Tomorrow's Owners (to be launched in October 2008).  We are in a strong position to help frame solutions to the current financial crisis, however not a think tank for knee jerk reactions, we are currently having healthy debate about what policies should be.  We are sharing some of this on forceforgood.com in the form of resources and blogs tagged with the issue 'global financial crisis'.  We aim not just to be transparent in our thoughts but to encourage comments from a forceforgood community.

This article is the transcript of a speech given by Joe Garner, Group General Manager PFS at HSBC.  It talks about how important trust is to the financial sector and how it can be gained or lost.