August 2017

Ethical, Environmental, Social and Governance-Oriented Investments

By Julia M. Puaschunder (Harvard) In the aftermath of the 2008/9 World Great Recession, ethical investing blossomed as opportunity to imbue trust in the economy. The crisis aftermath offered invaluable opportunities to redefine social investment to strengthen a more sustained, inclusive and equitable society. The 2015 incepted Sustainable Development Goals spearheaded the idea of financing societal advancement. Ethical, Environmental, Social and Governance-oriented Investments are key to sustainable prosperity. In the wake of stakeholder activism and based on intrinsic socio-psychological motives,...

Whale Watching on the Trading Floor: Organizational Misbehaviour, Collusive Rogue Trading, and Corporate Culture Deficits in the Investment Banking Industry

By Hagen Rafeld & Peter N. Posch (TU Dortmund University); Sebastian G Fritz-Morgenthal (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management) Recent history reveals a series of rogue traders, jeopardizing their employer’s assets and reputation. There have been a number of instances of unauthorized acting in concert between traders, their supervisors, and/or firm’s senior management, resulting in collusive rogue trading (CRT). In the likes of the Libor manipulation by jointly several traders from major investment banks, CRT cannot be seen only in relation...

May 2017

The Swiss Occupational Pension System: A Governance View

By Nadège Bregnard (University of Neuchatel) This paper describes the current Swiss occupational pension system with a focus on its governance aspects by emphasizing on the minimum guarantees established by the law, the governance-related requirements, and the most recent supervision framework. It documents in details how the various and different Swiss pension funds are structured and organised and identify six key structure characteristics to classify them. The major distinction with other country pension systems is that pure defined-contributions plans do...