The Independent recently highlighted the clash between Vince Cable and George Osborne over the reform of bankers’ bonuses. One bone of contention is Cable’s wish to make bonuses over £1million public. The real issue between the two here are concerns of the migration of capital, but this probably won’t make much difference. An article in Director covers Cable’s drive for responsible capitalism, however it is individual corporations that must be responsible, not just the financial services industry. At present, both the UK and US is hooked on short term shareholder value.
In recent research that we conducted it was estimated that £450 billion is awaiting investment in the City of London alone. The estimates for Wall Street range from $1 trillion to $2.8 trillion. The funds are waiting for investment and M&A when an opportunity that is considered sufficiently lucrative arises.  [...]

The idea of stakeholder capitalism, that the interests of all major stakeholders (i.e. investors and workers) should be treated equally in corporations, has been implied as the way of the future in this recent blog post from the editors of the Harvard Business Review, and I think this idea is absolutely right. Movement in this general direction is not just coming up as a response to the recession—though you could say our recessionary times have made us aware of the growing importance of stakeholder capitalism in the first place. [...]

Once again it’s that dreaded time of year for Americans: tax time. And the issue of tax havens has reared its ugly head quite a bit recently, both on a global level at the recent G20 summit, where world leaders agreed to name and shame countries that haven’t agreed to international reporting standards, and in the UK, where Barclays was in the news for attempting to keep details of its tax havens secret from The Guardian.
Tax havens are a major political issue. European countries particularly would like to see them more stringently regulated, but I don’t think any new international agreements will do much good. The reason? Tax havens cannot be dealt with on an international basis until they are resolved on a national basis. One only needs to look so far as the United States to see why – there are major tax havens in [...]

Speaking of Pascal Levensohn, he’s also written a very good guide for founders of startups who have new responsibilities and boards to look after. The guide is called “A Simple Guide to the Basic Responsibilities of VC-Backed Company Directors.”
During the early stages of a company’s founding, it’s especially important for leaders to get everyone on the same page so that all stakeholders share the same vision.