Was Tesco Corrupt? – II

Corrupt cultures in any organization or city or country don’t happen by chance. Tesco is a microcosm of the real world where activities are engineered by those in authority to create an atmosphere of pressure – maybe extreme pressure.

(earlier post on this: Was Tesco Corrupt?)

Listening to Melvyn Bragg’s “In Our Time” on Radio 4 today about the Haitian Revolution, it is easy to be complacent about how much we have changed. Slavery in Haiti was extreme – 90% of the population enslaved and under conditions that we in the West would rightly be scandalized about. Yet, we see similar conditions in many parts of the world today – countries like Equatorial Guinea where Transparency International is working to alert the world to tremendous poverty and lack of rights that are accorded to its people because the elite there takes virtually all the revenue from oil resources. Showing why “per capita GDP” data is, on its own so misguided in a world which is moving towards more income inequality, Equatorial Guinea has a per capita GDP on a par with Italy – yet most citizens lack access to clean drinking water.

 

The extraordinary problems that Equatorial Guinea has (caused by extreme corruption) may make any comparison with the UK seem a step too far. Surely the issues raised by the mis-accounting at Tesco is not even similar to what happens in Equatorial Guinea, Angola or other nations where vast resources are corruptly taken by a few.

 

However, that argument is much like someone arguing that, because of wars in Iraq and Syria, we should be content and not concern ourselves with knife-crime in the UK or poor waiting times in the NHS.

 

Corruption is corruption and what we are witnessing at Tesco has been the corrupt mis-accounting of £263 million and the humbling of a once-great business.

 

Deck Chairs on the Titanic?

 

Almost understandably, writers on Tesco and the company itself portray the problem as a few people that were under severe pressure and made bad decisions to bring forward hoped-for future profits into earlier periods. The Chairman is now leaving and various senior staff remain sidelined.

 

The auditors, Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) claim to have been “misled” by senior staff that were carrying out the mis-accounting. No-one seems surprised that they missed £263 million amongst the billions that are moved into and out of Tesco.

 

Accounting is but a reflection of a business. It is notoriously hard to find major errors which management are trying hard to hide. Most accounting crimes are found via whistle-blowers (as in this case and cases like Enron – which led to the demise of one of the big accounting firms – Arthur Andersen – who were complicit and went out of business as a result). This is not to say that PwC are in any way complicit. The issue is that audit firms are not that good at finding fault and (after 30 years as Tesco’s auditors, with ex-PwC members of the Tesco Board and being paid £10m a year) there are always suggestions that audit firms don’t try too hard.

 

The Board seems to have been in complete denial of the issues. Not only did they not know that the accounting problems existed until the whistle blower blowed, but they did not “see” the culture that led to the problems. Non-executive Directors on the audit committee, for example, are usually transfixed by numbers – and usually fail to ask the hard questions.

 

How many companies operating from the UK into nations where bribery and corruption is the norm ask the hard questions in Board and less formal meetings even now that the Bribery Act (and before it the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the USA) has been in place for 4 years. Glaxo (GSK) is feeling the pressure now about how it did business in China – a country where corruption is / was the norm and GSK went with the flow for many years. Here, staff were under pressure to perform but did so with the help of corruption.

 

The numbers could have indicated the problem but the culture certainly would have. Yet, how many Boards understand the culture of the organization for which they serve and can connect the culture with the potential for corruption or even associate the two?

 

Business Culture is key to success – and failure

 

When the banks entered into their maniacal dance of death resulting in the financial crash of 2007 and thereafter (which we are still paying for – literally), it was their common casino and bonus culture that was to blame. Senior management encouraged their investment banks and those outside the traditional banking rigours to take larger and larger risks but also to defraud customers. Ian Fraser’s excellent “Shredded” about RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) is an example of how individuals create the culture of a bank or any organization and then reap the whirlwind that follows – whether good or bad.

 

The worst business cultures see staff swept along like leaves. As a character in my own book “Last Line of Defense” said”

 

“A business can take on an independent existence of its own. It begins to direct the individuals within it, rather than the other way. There is a dynamic to a business which can make you feel like a leaf in a river, unable to change the river’s course. Eventually unable to change its own course, the leaf is swept away downstream. The river carries on as before.”

 

So, it happened in Tesco. The CEO demanded results and got them – trouble was, they were not real. Instead of Tesco being a great company with great products and services that its customers wanted, it relied on mis-accounting to boost results.

 

That is a corrupting culture. It corrupted staff to engage in non-value added activities that prejudiced the company’s future and were a direct result of the pressures of a business that was failing to differentiate itself through its proper business activities.

 

Some argue that no-one benefitted from this. Maybe true if all the culprits are shown to be culpable and pay back any bonuses and pensions gleaned from the additional profits and maybe pay for the corruption with their jobs. Saving a job and its not unreasonable salary through corrupting the numbers has resulted (arguably) in a threat to Tesco’s future that a focus on how to make Tesco a better business would not have done. Just like the bureaucracy in Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” that took up all a country’s resources and added no value, so a corrupt culture spends far too much time “corrupting” and not enough adding real value. So, a business collapses from the inside unless the corruption is arrested.

 

This is true of any corrupt organization – business or city or nation – where corruption exists and exacerbates the already bad conditions in which those who are party to the corruption or affected by it have to endure.

 

Fine, Tesco is not Equatorial Guinea but it is in the same game when, as a respected multinational business, it engages in bad business practices – corrupt practices.

 

Learning the Lessons?

 

Tesco seems not yet to have learned these lessons or at least not admitted to them. Accounting issues, changing board members, adding new processes and the like are all outputs of decisions to change culture. Why doesn’t Tesco actively state that this is what is has to do and then establish how best to do it. If it does not, then the changes will not result in real change but be like those deckchairs on the Titanic?

 

 

Hard Times – from 1854 to 1504 (Dodd-Frank)

Masters and “Quiet Servants”

Charles Dickens wrote “Hard Times – For These Times” (usually known as “Hard Times”) in 1854. This was a bleak analysis of mid-19^th Century factories and the mechanistic drive for material reward.

The world of the Industrial Revolution saw immense material improvement within a 19^th Century mindset that saw business develop on the back of “resources” – whether they were natural resources (like coal) or human resources – Dickens’s “quiet servants”. Resources were resources and how they were discovered, whose they were, the conditions under which they were mined, how they were shipped or the conditions under which they were placed into the manufacturing process were not much of a consideration.

Britain and other developing nations of the time grew wealthy on their own drive, ingenuities, financing and trading and manufacturing instincts but the whole process would have collapsed if access was not obtained to raw materials from the rest of the world and the use of “human materials” from all over (including their own countries). The terms “human resources” is still with us along with natural resources – but the “quiet servants” grew louder.

Gradually, from 1833 when Britain enacted laws that children under nine should not work in factories, throughout the second half of the 19^th Century and into the 20^th, our human resources (people working in factories and mining, for example, in the industrializing nations) campaigned and secured rights over income, health and safety, length of the working day and age restrictions.

Developed countries worked out that, to work well and succeed, we had to develop ways that we all could share to some extent in the benefits that material gain provided. This is the basis of free and fair societies based on successful economies.

From nation to global

The last thirty years has seen a vast shift from developed nations using the rest of the world merely to buy from and sell to, to a shift to manufacturing and now development and R&D throughout the world. Trade has grown internationally and the so-called integrated “global economy” is in place. We are no longer merely the industrialised west and the under-developed rest, but an inter-connected web of nations within one, world economy.

Yet, the strains are clearly showing. Allied to the vast changes in internet communications (similar to the vast increase of communications that shaped 18^th Century politics and the 19^th Century – the telegraph and the phone), all peoples of the world now see themselves as part of this world (or global) economy in the same way that 19^th and early 20^th Century factory workers saw themselves vis a vis factory owners. They then, understandably, demand rights and safeguards.

This is now happening on a world scale as we develop our global nation (economically).  The changes are profound and, if done properly, will be of enormous benefit.

21^st Century Responses

This week saw the approval after two years of the US SEC (Security and Exchange Commission) of articles 1502 and 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The two measures could have major implications for all of us in that (properly implemented) they set a real standard for the globalized economy in two, crucial areas:

1. the willingness of all of us to buy items cheaply no matter how the raw materials were obtained
2. the willingness of all of us to buy items from wherever in the world, no matter what corruption was employed in their provision.

Article 1502 refers to the mining of key raw materials in Africa such as tantalum, tungsten, gold and tin. It will (after an implementation period) require all suppliers and manufacturers to state that their products do not contain raw materials that financed war or bloody conflict. So many years after blood diamonds were headlined, there is now a statute that demands that companies step back and consider what they are buying. Manufacturers that buy such raw materials have had to count the cost of reputational disaster if they continue to sidestep basic human responsibilities in this global market. Now, there will be a legal imperative in the USA.

Article 1504 is the Cardin-Lugar rule which sets rules for country-by-country reporting of companies in the extractive industries concerning the revenues and profits they make in all countries where they do business (on a project by project basis).

Both articles require all companies that are listed in the USA to comply (although not immediately), wherever those countries are based. The European Union is expected to pass similar laws.

The implementation of the two articles will help to drive change on a global scale, where individual nations (e.g. where the resources are extracted) are unable to do so. Why? For several reasons:

1. Developing nations (especially resource-rich and economically poor) are prone to corruption and often unable or unwilling to enact these laws themselves;
2. Developing nations (especially in parts of Africa) use resource revenues to fund conflicts and wars;
3. Corporations operating in those areas need to show global sensibilities – where treatment in their overseas subsidiaries and employees is brought up to levels that we believe are credible and reasonable. It is hard to do that without legal change as competition is too high to expect corporate ethics (whatever that means) to work on its own.

To Ayn Rand libertarians Dodd-Frank is an economic travesty and many in the US are waiting for Romney and Ryan to get elected and reverse these laws. That would be the travesty. It is enough that in developing nations, the gaps between the rich and the rest are widening; it is enough that nations like Greece are now collapsing economically. There is potential for real strife in nations where inequality is too widespread.

But, we now live in a global economy where we are all dependent on each other. That means simply that best practice (that works on a national scale) has to be introduced globally wherever feasible. The intricate balance of trade, manufacturing, design and the need for natural resources (as well as the need to work together on climate change issues or disease control, for example) dramatically increase the need to treat the global economy as one economy – which it is. This means that national rights have to be respected but that is not enough.

Article 1504, for example, takes the trust element away from many nations like Equatorial Guinea, where the leadership is a kleptocracy and where riches from oil revenues do not go to the people in any meaningful form. Country by country reporting will, eventually, put an end to opaque deals between companies and those who have taken over the ownership of natural resources in those countries by showing transparently what profits are made and revenues generated on a project by project basis. Citizens in those countries will begin to be able to see how those revenues are used or not. Information is valuable and a first step to more equitable conditions.

21^st Century Ethics

As we enter the fifth year of the post-sub prime recession (with economic collapse in Greece and high youth unemployment in Spain), we remain much more concerned with ourselves than with people and nations thousands of miles away. The change that global economics has wrought, however, is that we can no longer ignore the plight of those so far away even if we (wrongly) wish to do so. Their plight is ours just as the impoverishment (economically and educationally) of our inner cities is a blight and our plight.

The Chinese view things differently, of course. A thousand years of relative impoverishment has left it hungry for economic growth and its hunger leads it to plunder the natural resources of Africa. China’s legalist centre, its Confucian heart and its loathing of western imperialism means that it is content to leave governance issues aside. Its own internal corruption (the corruption of a centrist and legalist government, where bribes are the common currency of the status quo) means that it is unlikely to require good governance in return for its acquisition of raw materials. In fact, its non-linkage of governance requirements gives China a distinct trading advantage in Africa.

It is to be hoped that this is a short-term business expedient and a long-term mistake for the Chinese. Just as the best manufacturers in the 19^th and early 20^th Century were leaders in improving conditions for their employees (notably, Henry Ford who wanted his own staff to be able to afford to buy his cars) and just as the US spearheaded safety rules in the 20^th Century, it is likely that the best companies will understand that improving the safeguards overseas (whether in their own companies or those of suppliers) will be important, medium-term investments.

Reputational loss is now potentially huge (as Apple realized when suicides at one of its biggest suppliers in China, Foxconn, began to rise and changes in working practices were required by Apple). The raw materials that we require for so many of the goods that we buy are obtained under horrendous conditions in Africa. It is not just blood diamonds but all those naturally occurring elements that the SEC has just regulated into law.

In addition, the country-by-country reporting will shine a light on the regimes that take in billions of dollars of income and disburse so little to their people. Pressure will mount from outside and inside.

Organisations like One, Transparency International, Global Witness and Enough and the Publish What You Pay coalition deserve huge credit for a relentless drive over many years to enact such positive changes. The US Congress deserves huge credit for bringing it into law in the powerhouse of the US economy. The EU should follow and they should all work within the OECD and elsewhere to ensure that these measures, providing an ethical underpinning to the global economy, are made global.

We live in a globalized economy and comparative advantages should be developed through intelligence, hard work and ingenuity – not via the impoverishment or hardship of our global neighbours.  The bringing into implementation of Dodd-Frank’s articles 1502 and 1504 suggests that the global economy is waking up to the fact that our “quiet servants” deserve respect wherever they are – close to home or further away. The global economy (and climate change and air travel and the internet….) means we are all neighbours now.

From Euro Chaos to Chasm

As Greece Votes

I was on an ethics panel this week – organized by CGMA and Accounting Magazine. This has been arranged to discuss the outcome of CGMA’s recent survey “Managing Responsible Business” http://www.cgma.org/Resources/Reports/Pages/ManagingResponsibleBusiness.aspx

This survey explored the range of issues around business and doing things properly – ethically. It found that most businesses tried to, CEO’s were handing down responsibility for this to other staff, the ability to do so changed by country and there was real pressure not to in some countries.

With elections in Greece on Sunday and the Euro in everyone’s mind, the issue of business ethics seemed mighty small in comparison.

Ethics – moral rectitude, the rules of conduct – are not just about business. It is from society that ethics emerge and it is the destruction of the rules of good conduct that has tipped Europe and many other parts of the world into an economic, political and financial chasm. It is a chasm that threatens our way of life and, deep inside that chasm, there is not a lot of light.

The Chasm is not just a Banking one

 

We are continuously being told by our politicians that the current banking crisis can be resolved with large amounts of cash. The latest attempts are the £100bn on offer by the Bank of England of low rate loans to banks to regenerate lending in the UK and the €100bn on offer to Spain to prop up their banks.

In the chasm, sticking plasters don’t work.

Banking liquidity is not the problem anyway. The problem that banks have in Spain, for example, is solvency – their very being is at stake not their ability to lend in the short-term. They were over-stretched by awful decisions ten years ago to lend to get-rich-quick property schemes that were doomed and, when the tide went out, were shown to be naked. Borrowers across the western world were too highly geared – over-leveraged. While companies have managed to get their act together, individuals have not and while savings are higher, they are still, by normal standards, far too over-leveraged – which is still leading to house price reductions everywhere but London (where funds are rushing in from all corners of worse of countries).

But, the banks are hiding behind the problem in front of them – national insolvency. The transfer from nations (i.e. taxpayers) to banks has been enormous and continues. Well over a trillion dollars was poured into the US banking system and the same in Europe. The estimate is that this needs at least to be doubled. National solvency is at stake throughout Europe (west, south and east especially) and the austerity programmes now in place are a testimony to them.

Like the 1930’s, this is leading to massive unemployment and a risk that the chasm into which nation by nation is being thrown will swallow them whole. In Europe, the answer, we are told lies with Germany – they should assume the debts of all the others with Eurobonds – a financial answer to a financial problem.

But, the chasm is bigger than this.

The Chasm is engulfing Politics, Economics and Finance

Behind the financing of banks and the insolvency of nations lie the root causes. These are the disenfranchisement of the mass of people in most nations – disenfranchised not by their inability to vote every few years but by the paucity of choices on offer.

Greece offers a great example of a nation in economic chaos but the causes and the choices open to the people there are not often recorded.

Whoever read Michael Lewis’s “Boomerang” will understand some of the corruption that underpins the chaos. It is endemic and led by a political elite that have rampaged through the economy and gouged out any life from it. At the same time as The President of Equatorial Guinea is about to meet with four NGO’s (including my former employer, Global Witness) to discuss the rampant corruption inside his country, who is meeting with who to ensure that Greece can emerge with some dignity from its corruption?

Who can blame voters for, at last, running away from Pasok and into the arms of Syriza – the main concern is not the Euro, it is the corruption of the political elite and complete lack of trust in any politicians. The whole political class is tainted.

Outside Greece, the same is true to some extent in Spain and in Italy, where technocrats (unelected) now rule. The paucity of choice for voters – why vote for politicians when they are all the same and as corrupting and corruptible as each other?

The euro problem is much deeper. It is not just about emulating hard-working Germans, it is about serious change needed throughout Europe where leadership is absent or tainted by nations that are corrupt, unable to raise taxation, where the cash culture is rampant. This is true in Greece, Spain, certainly southern Italy and elsewhere. Why would Germany want to pick up the tab for this when the problem is chasm deep – not the surface banking or financial issue that has been painted?

The Ruling Class

In democracies, we are supposed to be able to vote out political parties that do a bad job. What happens when the whole political class is damned? The whole electorate is disenfranchised as a result.

This is true throughout the Eurozone – political parties have joined forces with other powerful elites to seemingly run countries – now, it is clear they have run them into the ground or, worse, into the chasm where conventional politics, economics and finance are drowning.

The ruling classes – politicians of all political persuasion, big business, the public sector – decided to run off with the benefits and have left the rest behind. Somewhere those funds reside in tax havens, well away from the hands of civil society. If it was all about harder effort, there could be some light ahead, but the problem is so deep that it will take years of real change and real hurt to recover to anywhere near where countries thought they were until recently.

From Chasm to ……what?

The European dream of one country living under one flag, which to many is a nightmare, is not a new one as the wars of the twentieth century showed. Now, a war just as savage is being fought – but a war where the fighting is hidden and where the soldiers don’t even realize they are in the trenches. Greek citizens and the young in Spain (where 50% are out of work) probably realize the consequences of the post-war European experiment. Many others don’t yet, but soon will.

Papering over a crack or two is relatively easy. Papering over a chasm is impossible,

The core problems of societies need to be resolved – corruption has to be ended, taxation has to be collected, public servants have to serve the public, politicians have to be credible and respected and people have to believe that if they work hard they stand a chance of being successful. For banks to function, they need finance; for businesses to succeed, they need markets and finance; for an economy to succeed, it needs good business but also a society that works – and that is not riven with insidious corruption of people and dignity.

Many African states (with massive natural resources) are corrupt and wealth is held by small elites. We did not believe that the corruption in Europe was on the same scale and, indeed, it is not the same – but the scale may be greater and just as endemic.

Solutions will not be found purely through the injection of more money into a chasm – the chasm has to be filled first or cleansed at least. Liberal democracy was supposed to be the best solution (the best worst solution). The 21^st Century struggle may not be against the same totalitarians as in the last century (fascists and communists) and, hopefully, it may not be sullied by war and death, but, metaphorically, it will be just as bloody and won’t be complete until political elites are brought down to earth and civil society gets inside the tent.