Morally/actually bankrupt

4 October 2010 By George Hay Follow @gfhay

Financial chiefs deserve support for highlighting an ethical basis for what they do. But instilling individual integrity in banks looks a stiff task, and won’t be enough to make the system fairer. That will only happen when even big institutions carry the can for their follies.

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Bankers, policymakers and regulators gathered on Oct. 4 at a conference organised by the City of London called "Values and Trust in the City: beyond Law and Regulation".

The conference comes after Marcus Agius, chairman of Barclays, and sixteen other bosses of UK financial institutions wrote a letter to the Financial Times on Sept. 28.

The letter asserted that regulatory and fiscal actions alone would not suffice in reforming the banking sector following the financial crisis.

The letter said that bankers should "not be bound only by the requirements of law to engage in profitable business in the service of their shareholders, but also be motivated by, and subject to, a larger social and moral purpose which governs and limits how they behave."

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