Financial Executives Confess: Sure, We Lie and Cheat

Frederick E. Allen posted for Forbes:

You might not expect executives of top financial businesses to admit outright that they’re crooks, but that’s pretty much what they did in responding to a new survey released today by the whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow. The firm did online interviews with 500 “senior individuals within the financial sector,” including fund managers, bankers, and asset managers, half of them in the U.S. and half in the U.K. No fewer than 24% of them admitted that they “believed that the rules may have to be broken in order to be successful,” that is, that they “have to engage in unethical or illegal activity.” Only 41% “reported that staff within their own organization had ‘definitely not’ engaged in unethical or illegal conduct.” Some 39% found it likely that their competitors had engaged in illegal or unethical activity.

Another eye-opening finding:

16% of total respondents were at least fairly likely to engage in insider trading if they could get away with it. Perhaps more troubling, only 55% of all respondents could say definitively that they would not engage in insider trading if they could make $10 million with no risk of getting arrested.

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