Buhlmann's Corner

A sorry picture of the USA

WikiLeaks is (self-interestedly?) damaging the US image of leadership. Keeping file notes that no one out there is to read – that’s hardly the proper care of the good family father. What we see is a lord of the manor of the bad kind. WikiLeaks is destroying the legitimacy of the US authorities to collect fines for corruption from Siemens, Daimler & Co. In moral terms, the shareholder actually ought to ask whether the payers should not claim rights to restitution. At least WikiLeaks shows us the contradiction and the double-dealing – a contradiction that good corporate governance can never accept.

Things are quite different with the State Bank of the “uncreative” Chancellor Angela Merkel, the KfW – as we know, a capital stock from a paternal foundation by the Americans after World War II. The institution recently held a conference, together with the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, on “Sustainable Investment 2010”– a progress report, perhaps? Wonderfully structured and brought from all across Europe, the papers were presented and only lightly discussed. A quote from the moderator, Professor Martin Faust, “the general meeting is only for private shareholders, sustainability does not have much of a place there,” tore down the green façades of SRI/CSR and ESG funds with equal trenchancy. Since no objection was offered, those concerned seemed to agree with him: green is apparently just there for advertising.