Ethics in the Last (and Next) Financial Crisis

On 25 November, the Whitaker Institute was delighted to host a seminar with Professor Richard Bowen from the University of Texas at Dallas. Professor Bowen was a business chief underwriter at Citigroup who discovered that billions of dollars annually of defective mortgages were being sold to investors in securitizations as quality mortgages. He provided evidence to the SEC three months before the bank bailouts and gave nationally televised testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, where he witnessed coordinated efforts to hide key parts of his testimony from the American public.

In his session, Professor Bowen spoke to the Whitaker Institute and to Masters students in Accounting and Finance about his experiences as a professional chartered accountant, and business underwriter, who detected risky lending behaviour within the world’s largest bank.  He discussed the role of leadership in developing open and ethical organizational cultures and offered practical ways in which organizations have worked towards this, drawing on international best practice.

For more information on Richard Bowen, click here.

Professor Kate Kenny and Professor Richard Bowen