ANN CROTTY: Does JSE CEO face a tougher challenge than the pope?
The financial sector is not run for the community it supposedly serves
So, is JSE CEO Nicky Newton-King facing a tougher challenge than the pope? Both are trying to protect their institutions from the consequences of scandals, rumours and innuendo, which are threatening to destroy the faith needed to continue functioning. Newton-King and her colleagues are hoping to persuade millions of desperate people that financial markets are "trusted spaces" where investors can feel comfortable about committing their hard-earned savings to strangers. (A secular version of what Pope Francis is hoping for.) Because of the lack of alternatives most investors are desperately keen to believe markets are "trusted spaces". Short of buying gold, burying it in the garden and hoping to avoid land expropriators, we have little choice other than to rely on financial markets that become increasingly complex by the day. The professional strangers on whom we rely generally pour the money into a fund, which will be invested in another fund and perhaps another until it eventually ...
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