Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Good piece on Business Spectator

Robert Gottliebsen and Alex Liddington-Cox have put together the BP spill and the News Corp hack to conclude;

For the second time in less than a year, a major global corporation has failed to understand the fundamental risks of its business.

One could add to that a whole string of investment banks that failed to understand the fundamental risks to their business of certain derivatives!

They also note the similarity of the responses they took to their crises and foreshadowed that

A vast number of other global corporations facing similar situations will make the same mistakes because the BP and News Corporation errors reflect flaws in the global corporation 'rule book'.

The first step is to downplay the severity or claim responsibility lay elsewhere (for the GFC think of blaming the Government for encouraging home ownership).

The early dismissal of the issue makes it much harder to win back trust.

The big question here is whether the form of the modern MNC makes risk management possible anymore.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

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