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Welcome to FinlayONgovernance 2.0, where we look at themes we raised 40 years ago, like sanity in CEO pay, diversity in the boardroom, ESG, before it took on today’s elevated moniker and stakeholder capitalism, a term we coined four decades ago. From time to time, we try to add a fresh perspective to those challenges, as we did in recent pieces in Financial Times of London.   

The pages below predicted, captured and analyzed many of the seminal events that led to the greatest crisis in capitalism since the 1930s, and illuminated the breakdowns in ethics, regulation and leadership that paved their way.  They were, in many ways, a chronicle of disaster foretold. They were also the ESG lens of the time.

We were the first to highlight the boardroom failures of many companies, from Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers to Nortel and Hollinger. We brought the insider weaknesses and potentially fatal governance flaws of RIM/BlackBerry to public attention, warned the world about the ticking time bomb at Livent, and highlighted the antiquated governance practices of Apple long before scandals rocked those companies. In the postings that follow you can visit our thoughts at the time, including stories that have taken on an iconic mantle among regulators and scholars, like Did Bear Stearns Really Have a Board? and RIM Finally Runs Out of Shiny Objects. 

We were also the first to raise serious questions about the self-serving and self-perpetuating governance practices of the New York Federal Reserve, which we have long maintained were a major, and much underreported, factor in some of the misguided decisions that led to the 21st century’s global banking crisis.  We advanced a number of other provocative thoughts about many of the decisions and figures that played prominent roles in the economic drama of a generation and predicted the historically wide gap in income between the very wealthy and the middle class would produce catastrophic results. It soon did. It will again.

Many of the ethical shortcomings that led to the crisis of a few short years ago — the arrogance of power, an overweening sense of entitlement and a disinclination to hear or listen to unconventional thinking — have not disappeared; they have only cleverly camouflaged themselves in order to allow public and media attention to move on to other things. But the consequences of these follies will return again.

I have personally selected a number of columns and postings that captured this uniquely revealing period in our history.  These came after my regular op-eds in The Globe and Mail and Financial Post and are in addition to our media interviews in publications in New York, Toronto, London, Germany and Brazil.

What follows below were among our more popular offerings, repeatedly visited by readers, leaders and regulators around the world and now featured in books, scholarly papers and discussions in the US Congress and Canadian Parliament.  I think they give a clue to what to look for today in distinguishing the impostors of success from the real champions of principled progress.

Let me know what you think.

Illuminating the evolution of private enterprise and public trust over four decades. The Finlay Centre for Corporate  & Public Governance is the first and longest running think tank of its kind capturing the promise of the well-governed organization and the ethical practices that shape it. 

“For every major corporate policy, decision or public explanation, more and more people are asking: Is it right? Is it fair?  And most perplexing of all for the board of directors: is it in the public interest?

It now seems clear that the profitability and economic performance of a corporation will increasingly cease to be the sole criteria by which it is judged. A new set of legitimizers of public consent is coming to the fore, accelerated and strengthened by the harsh realization of the fragile interdependence that links our economy, our society and our environment.” ~J. Richard Finlay, Business Quarterly, 1979.

J. Richard Finlay, Business Quarterly, 1979.

(Presaging the arrival of ESG by more than 40 years)

“Sound governance is not some abstract ideal or utopian pipe dream. Nor does it occur by accident or through sudden outbreaks of altruism. It happens when leaders lead with integrity, when directors actually direct and when stakeholders demand the highest level of ethics and accountability.”
J.Richard Finlay — Addressing the Standing Committee on Banking, Commerce and the Economy, The Senate of Canada, 1994,  one of a number of apperances before the committees of the Parliament of Canada. 

J. Richard Finlay was the first witness ever to be designated an expert in corporate governance by the Senate Banking committee.