Governance veteran Bob Monks recently attended the London Business School’s Colloquium on Corporate Governance, an invitation-only event comprising 75 of the leading governmental, private sector business and investors in the UK who convened to consider recent governance failings.
Bob was asked to present the key note address at the opening night dinner. What he said will come as no surprise to the governance fellow travellers, but by any measure, his speech was provocative. Bob contends that government intervention is necessary and that reforms must go beyond minor tweaks to the system of governance and accountability. He also reiterated his common message that to be truly effective, government regulation must be enforced.
In his conclusion Bob was optimistic that UK investors were on the right track: “there is enormous opportunity for the UK here. Because you of all people are the nearest to having this right. The problem is one of the greatest of civilised man: how do you accommodate private power and the public good? That is really what we are trying to figure out. That is the great question and it is worth getting it right. Because we’ve seen that with all of the miseries of the last months that private energy unleashed has created vast wealth for all types of people but it’s also created problems for society we’ve not dealt with all that well.”
The full text of the speech can be accessed from the following link: