Banker pursues holy grail: 'ethical capitalism'

LONDON BRIEFING:KEN COSTA is the man with the toughest job in the city of London. The veteran investment banker, one of the city's most senior and most widely respected figures, has been charged by the Church of England with finding a way to "reconnect the financial with the ethical".

His mission comes in the wake of the turmoil within the church created by the Occupy movement, which has been camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London for just over three weeks now. St Paul’s, one of London’s most popular tourist attractions, was not the original target of the anti-capitalist protesters, who had initially attempted to set up camp outside the London Stock Exchange, just across from the cathedral in Paternoster Square.

But, having been turned away from the exchange, they settled instead on the steps of the cathedral.

Thus the church became the unwitting – and unwilling – focus for the Occupy movement in London. It has led to a raft of resignations at St Paul’s, notably the Rev Dr Giles Fraser, Cannon Chancellor of the cathedral, who quit a fortnight ago as the cathedral closed its doors to worshippers for the first time since the Blitz.

Fraser, who had welcomed the protesters, and instead urged the police to leave, said he feared evicting the activists would lead to “violence in the name of the church”.

The cathedral is open once again but the church has been severely stung by the widespread criticism of its handling of the affair. Now Costa, a former chairman of Lazards International, has been asked to lead a team drawn from the financial and religious worlds to examine whether a new form of “ethical capitalism” could be made to work.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, Costa said the market “has managed to slip its moral moorings” and that, particularly during the “exuberant irrationality of the last few decades, the market economy has shifted from its moral foundations with disastrous consequences”.

Maximising shareholder value – one of the cornerstones of capitalism – can no longer be the sole criterion for satisfying returns to shareholders, he said.

Promising “an interactive dialogue” that would aim to bridge the differences between the protesters and the Square Mile, Costa also pledged that the initiative would be no “reheated Faith in the City”, a reference to the report that so infuriated Baroness Thatcher when it was published in 1985. Dismissed by many politicians at the time as “Marxist theology”, that report laid the blame for many of Britain’s social problems firmly at the door of Thatcherite policies. Its authors were derided by some members of parliament as “a load of communist clerics”.

Costa is neither a communist nor a cleric, although he is one of the city’s leading Christian figures, a long-time supporter of St Paul’s and chairman of Alpha International, the organisation that promotes the Alpha course on the Christian faith. His reputation and standing in the two very different worlds – financial and religious – makes him the perfect choice to lead the church’s search for some answers.

But these are questions that have been grappled with for centuries. And it’s a huge ask to expect Costa and his team to be able to produce workable solutions.

However hard it might be, though, it seems right that someone should at least try to find a way forward.

A quarter of a century ago, when the city underwent the seismic changes brought by the “Big Bang”, Costa was working right at the heart of the Square Mile – at the venerable merchant bank SG Warburg.

So he is in a good position to evaluate the findings of a report published by the Church of England on Monday, which concluded that the morality of city bankers and traders had worsened since the dramatic deregulation of financial markets in 1986.

The report – Value and Values: Perceptions of Ethics in the City Today– was published by the St Paul's Institute think tank, and had originally timed for release on October 27th, the anniversary of Big Bang. It was written before the Occupy protest erupted but its publication was held back because of the troubles at the cathedral.

The report questioned bankers and financial sector workers in the city and, among its findings, is the fact that many believe the gap between rich and poor – a key complaint of the Occupy movement – is too great.

But there are other revelations that will worry not only the church, but also Costa.

One is that only a third of those questioned said they believed in God. Another is that most of those questioned could not recall the Latin motto of the City of London – Dictum Meum Pactum:My Word is My Bond.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardiannewspaper in London