Overview

Corporate misgovernance and the failure of government regulation have led to major financial fiascos. 'Disorganized crimes' are disruptive and costly. Munk links the two major eras of corporate misgovernance during the last decade to explain how these events occur and what can be done to prevent them from re-occurring.

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9781137330260

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Reviews

'Mr Munk's book covers governance issues from a truly economic perspective. As a result of the financial crisis, many have discarded economics to find guiding principles to frame regulation of corporations and financial entities. I learned and thought about many issues as a result of reading this impressive book that highlight and illustrate how these principles, including the responsibilities of boards of directors and corporate officials, interact and how incentives and penalties impact the relations among the various stakeholders of the firm.' - Myron S. Scholes, Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, USA 'Bernie Munk concludes that the most important failure of American capitalism is that corporate boards have defaulted on their responsibility to protect the shareholders from the excessive risk taking by management. Hundreds of managements have 'cooked the books' by the seemingly innocuous practice of smoothing quarterly earnings. Some boards including Enron's were corrupted by the top managers, hundreds have been co-opted. Munk provides a long list of policy remedies to shift the primary allegiance of boards to the shareholders. One start would be to establish a new institution that would score the success of boards of the largest 100 and then the largest 500 public firms in representing shareholder interests. A powerful and timely read.' - Robert Z. Aliber, Professor of International Finance and Economics Emeritus, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, USA 'Bernard Munk brings one of the most incisive minds in the world of business to the analysis of modern-day corporate governance. He is a master at critiquing the people and process weaknesses in the system and pointing the way to a more constructive higher ground, one in which all stakeholders of a 21st century corporation will benefit. His book should be high on the reading list in global boardrooms and investment firms.' - James Kristie - Editor, Directors & Boards 'It is not often in the history of economic thought that a book emerges which is a cross between a Dostoyevskeite analysis of crime and punishment and a well-reasoned assault on established doctrine. Dr. Munk has accomplished that feat with this monograph on corporate mis-governance. As a one time graduate student of the University of Chicago he is dismayed that the real world of the corporate boardroom seems to operate often in sinister fashion inconsistent with the benign working of the invisible hands - and worse still, the capital markets fail miserably on occasion to exert any discipline. Most of the time these failures are hidden from view but during the asset and credit bubble busts which have become a regular feature in our age of monetary instability there have been a series of spectacular corporate scandals. With great precision, drawing on his own considerable business experience, Dr. Munk shows how these remained for so long undetected and what changes in institutional arrangements are essential to containing this on-going menace to our economic prosperity.' - Brendan Brown, Economist and author of The Global Curse of the Federal Reserve

'Dr Munk's book covers governance issues from a truly economic perspective. As a result of the financial crisis, many have discarded economics to find guiding principles to frame regulation of corporations and financial entities. I learned and thought about many issues as a result of reading this impressive book that highlight and illustrate how these principles, including the responsibilities of boards of directors and corporate officials, interact and how incentives and penalties impact the relations among the various stakeholders of the firm.' - Myron S. Scholes, Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, USA 'Bernie Munk concludes that the most important failure of American capitalism is that corporate boards have defaulted on their responsibility to protect the shareholders from the excessive risk taking by management. Hundreds of managements have 'cooked the books' by the seemingly innocuous practice of smoothing quarterly earnings. Some boards including Enron's were corrupted by the top managers, hundreds have been co-opted. Munk provides a long list of policy remedies to shift the primary allegiance of boards to the shareholders. One start would be to establish a new institution that would score the success of boards of the largest 100 and then the largest 500 public firms in representing shareholder interests. A powerful and timely read.' - Robert Z. Aliber, Professor of International Finance and Economics Emeritus, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, USA 'Bernard Munk brings one of the most incisive minds in the world of business to the analysis of modern-day corporate governance. He is a master at critiquing the people and process weaknesses in the system and pointing the way to a more constructive higher ground, one in which all stakeholders of a 21st century corporation will benefit. His book should be high on the reading list in global boardrooms and investment firms.' - James Kristie - Editor, Directors & Boards 'It is not often in the history of economic thought that a book emerges which is a cross between a Dostoyevskeite analysis of crime and punishment and a well-reasoned assault on established doctrine. Dr. Munk has accomplished that feat with this monograph on corporate mis-governance. As a one time graduate student of the University of Chicago he is dismayed that the real world of the corporate boardroom seems to operate often in sinister fashion inconsistent with the benign working of the invisible hands and worse still, the capital markets fail miserably on occasion to exert any discipline. Most of the time these failures are hidden from view but during the asset and credit bubble busts which have become a regular feature in our age of monetary instability there have been a series of spectacular corporate scandals. With great precision, drawing on his own considerable business experience, Dr. Munk shows how these remained for so long undetected and what changes in institutional arrangements are essential to containing this on-going menace to our economic prosperity.' - Brendan Brown, Economist and author of The Global Curse of the Federal Reserve 'A must read to anyone concerned about governance. The book offers insightful, innovative and timely perspective on Governance of great relevance to corporate, national and global organizations.' - Yoram (Jerry) Wind, The Lauder Professor, Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA

'Dr Munk's book covers governance issues from a truly economic perspective. As a result of the financial crisis, many have discarded economics to find guiding principles to frame regulation of corporations and financial entities. I learned and thought about many issues as a result of reading this impressive book that highlight and illustrate how these principles, including the responsibilities of boards of directors and corporate officials, interact and how incentives and penalties impact the relations among the various stakeholders of the firm.' - Myron S. Scholes, Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, USA 'Bernie Munk concludes that the most important failure of American capitalism is that corporate boards have defaulted on their responsibility to protect the shareholders from the excessive risk taking by management. Hundreds of managements have 'cooked the books' by the seemingly innocuous practice of smoothing quarterly earnings. Some boards including Enron's were corrupted by the top managers, hundreds have been co-opted. Munk provides a long list of policy remedies to shift the primary allegiance of boards to the shareholders. One start would be to establish a new institution that would score the success of boards of the largest 100 and then the largest 500 public firms in representing shareholder interests. A powerful and timely read.' - Robert Z. Aliber, Professor of International Finance and Economics Emeritus, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, USA 'Bernard Munk brings one of the most incisive minds in the world of business to the analysis of modern-day corporate governance. He is a master at critiquing the people and process weaknesses in the system and pointing the way to a more constructive higher ground, one in which all stakeholders of a 21st century corporation will benefit. His book should be high on the reading list in global boardrooms and investment firms.' - James Kristie - Editor, Directors & Boards 'It is not often in the history of economic thought that a book emerges which is a cross between a Dostoyevskeite analysis of crime and punishment and a well-reasoned assault on established doctrine. Dr. Munk has accomplished that feat with this monograph on corporate mis-governance. As a one time graduate student of the University of Chicago he is dismayed that the real world of the corporate boardroom seems to operate often in sinister fashion inconsistent with the benign working of the invisible hands - and worse still, the capital markets fail miserably on occasion to exert any discipline. Most of the time these failures are hidden from view but during the asset and credit bubble busts which have become a regular feature in our age of monetary instability there have been a series of spectacular corporate scandals. With great precision, drawing on his own considerable business experience, Dr. Munk shows how these remained for so long undetected and what changes in institutional arrangements are essential to containing this on-going menace to our economic prosperity.' - Brendan Brown, Economist and author of The Global Curse of the Federal Reserve 'A must read to anyone concerned about governance. The book offers insightful, innovative and timely perspective on Governance of great relevance to corporate, national and global organizations.' - Yoram (Jerry) Wind, The Lauder Professor, Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Author Information

Bernard Munk received his PhD and MA in economics and a BA in history at the University of Chicago, USA. He founded several production and trading companies for agricultural and meat products and then migrated to the petroleum industry. By means of a leveraged buyout, he and his partner acquired a large petroleum terminal and a pipeline management company and began a fuel oil distribution company serving east coast utilities in the late 1980s and after selling this company to a NYSE company, in 1992 he became an adjunct Professor of Management at the Wharton School initiating a core curriculum course in Geopolitics. He then formed a financial advisory company providing consulting services to investment banks. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia where he has written and spoken on economic policy and energy policy. He has published in academic and trade journals and for a number of years maintained a blog at www.ecomentary.com that will resume shortly following publication of this book.

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