“It doesn`t take much imagination to see that these corporate structures can be used for nefarious purposes,” he added. “And, of course, they have all the legal protections of the United States.” The seemingly endless implosion of a variety of complex investments, including credit default swaps, special investment vehicles, mortgage-backed securities and hedge funds, has left a trail of broken portfolios and confused investors. Investments and others like them have structures that are too difficult to understand, even for sophisticated investors. This is evident when investments collapse and the portfolios of foundations, foundations, occupational pension schemes, local governments and other well-informed institutions are pulled down. So we assume that it is a binary system. You are either an activist or a shareholder, but today there are stakeholders. What is the role of stakeholders? What is the place of workers? What is the place of the environment? What is the general place of society? Well, they are not represented. They are not part of the rules. So, on the one hand, companies tell us that they want to have a social purpose; they want to be measured by their social purpose. But they don`t integrate that into the legal infrastructure that they have put in place and that we can use to judge companies. In fact, they do not even allow these lawyers to come and comment, observe or hear what rules are written.

In this way, they allow a certain type of standard to prevail. I don`t know if it`s a race to the bottom, but the governance is obviously not as tight as it could be because they eliminate the political part that is the most boring part for them. Many companies, including Enron, WorldCom and Tyco, have gone down in history for their illegal practices related to creative accounting. However, not all creative and aggressive accounting methods are necessarily illegal. There is a wide range of ways in which a company can potentially try to improve its bottom line, often just before earnings are reported. Some of these systems may include non-GAAP creative reporting, a focus on IFRS results, no disclosure for problematic situations, share issuance and repurchase programs, income and expense time, asset holdings and sales, pension plan planning, and the auspicious use of derivatives. There was a recent case in the United Kingdom that made me think, I am British, Rishi Sunak, who is the Chancellor, as the Minister of Finance of the United Kingdom. His wife is a very wealthy Indian heiress, and it has been found that she had a so-called non-domicile status, which basically means that she paid £30,000 to.

Do not quote me on that. She paid a relatively small sum to avoid a larger sum, that is, the real taxes she owed. When this information came out, she retracted and said that I was going to pay the taxes I was supposed to pay all the time. Legality is an interesting concept, but it gets darker, I think, in the case of Delaware, because, as I said, who writes the laws anyway? Bethany McLean: I think if you were optimistic, you`d say words have to change first, and then stocks have to change. And maybe the fact that the words change isn`t at all decisive, but it`s at least a sign of hope. But I want to end with the note for possible optimism, that is, and this is kind of the end of the game show, but if you were to rule the world for a day, what would you change to solve the problems you identify, or at least improve them, if not solve them? Is there anything we could do if we had the motivation and the will to do it, and the political power and control over the world? Well, there`s a lot of research that shows that all of this is absurd, that they`re not really doing anything essential, except that someone on the social media team is posting something, but that`s what they tell us is their moral compass. I am simply saying that the system that holds them accountable is in the first place? I think there are some very smart people working on things like measuring environmental impact, but we`re not there yet. I would say that we have to look at ourselves to keep them to the standards they told us they wanted to meet. Examples of ethical standards. Legal and ethical considerations. Legal and ethical requirements.

List of unethical behaviour in the workplace. What are the legal and ethical considerations? What does ethics mean, what does ethics mean? Anyone who simply tells you or implies that everything that is legal is also ethical most likely engages in selfish rationalizations. If this idea arises in the private sector, it is likely that someone is trying to justify profitable behavior that is unethical but not yet illegal. If the same idea arises in academic circles, it is more likely that the self-interest they are trying to preserve is their own interest in avoiding the hard work of determining which business behaviors are unethical and why. Other examples of unethical business practices include Hal Weitzman: OK. Well, I think that`s a reference to what Kimberly just talked about. An example is that delaware will say . and I encourage everyone watching and everyone who is here to go and see how they present it. Because I present my version and they have their own version of events, which can be found on the website of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

For example, they have a question and answer section where they say Delaware is a tax haven, right? And they will, of course, answer and say, no, it`s not a tax haven. But the language is written very precisely, because Delaware is clearly a tax haven. It is a national tax haven. In other words, it allows companies to save on paying corporate tax in one state by directing so-called intangible profits, such as the money they pay to brands, to another state. The special rules written in Delaware are the rules of the Companies Code that establish the responsibilities of CEOs to their shareholders. Bethany McLean: The library card anecdote is fascinating, and it brings us back to your perspective on Delaware`s power to write the rules and apply the way they are written. Basically, we should all do the right thing and not just follow the rules, and we even learn this as children. Think. Young children often say, “But you didn`t say I couldn`t!” We tell our children that this does not make their actions righteous.

So why should we expect a little less from adults, especially elected leaders? This action is ethical because a child is hungry and wants to eat something, but it is illegal because theft is illegal all over the world. Kimberly Kay Hoang: I mean, I think there are people who see this as a kind of ultimate family sacrifice – that what they`re doing is ensuring the prosperity of future generations, and that`s kind of what they need to do to ensure that. I think other people are drawing hard lines and saying I`m just not participating. And so they create markets where markets don`t exist, so they turn away from the types of business transactions that are state-related, like natural resources, and instead of doing something like that, they go into technology, where everything is just set up off the coast. I mean, offshore is sort of hidden, but it also allows you to remove a lot of these shady styles of brokerage by moving around the state, and that`s also part of the book`s story. Remember that not so long ago, the law in the South was that blacks had to sit too much in the back of the bus. Legal, but not ethical!!! The statement is often used to justify an action that is morally questionable, but that is not formally prevented by any type of law or rule. We hear it a lot these days, especially in the context of politicians, their business, campaign finance, election processes, and so on.

It`s depressing that so many of our brightest minds – you asked about the cost? I mean, here`s the cost. Many of our smartest people in our society spend their time trying to find ways for businesses to evade taxes. It`s a bit depressing. As in classical times, people were. Pythagoras, it doesn`t matter, does incredible things. And now Pythagoras works in a consulting firm and escapes the tax. It`s a bit depressing. But on the other hand, companies react to the environment given to them.

For me, what was amazing about what I was looking for wasn`t that companies were doing shady things. It was that Delaware was a bit shady – that we had this system, and people kind of chased me away and told me it wasn`t a story, which is how it is again, ah, my ears were pricked. He asked them to amend the code to require officers to check against this list. Very undisputed. In fact, so undisputed that they actually introduced it a year later. But when he made this proposal to the Delaware Legislature, he was asked in the Judiciary Committee, “Did you make this proposal? Or did it happen through the process? He said, “What`s the process? They said, “Well, it has to come from the Delaware Bar. He said, “Well, I`m a legislator. I suggest so.

They said, “No, no. All suggestions, any changes to the Corporate Code must come from the Delaware Bar. In other words, an elected legislature does not have the power to change the law.