These were the headlines that greeted me yesterday morning.

I ended up at The Globe Theatre, being introduced by my wife to “Timon of Athens” one of Shakespeare’s least known plays.

It was written in 1606, yet it seems full of references to the world that gave us Lehmann Brothers.

“I wonder men dare trust themselves with men”

“Like madness is the glory of this life……”

“O the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us”

Timon the hero ignores all the warnings by his steward that he is getting into debt, throwing away wealth that he doesn’t possess to people who will never repay him. When the end comes his creditors are merciless and recipients of his early generosity refuse his pleas for help.

He then walks out on them, on the loyal steward who had tried to warn him of impending disaster, and away from Athens.

He so despises the, money-motivated hypocrisy of its life that he exiles himself from Athens to the forest.

This is a bitter over-reaction, a backlash as blind as his earlier blind faith in big spending and largesse.

And that’s where we are now.

“Killed by complexity” says one headline.

That’s only part of the story.

If you want to understand the roots of the crisis, read “Restoring Trust” produced by a group of authoritative figures from the word of financial services. A report whose warning could have saved us all so much pain if it had been heeded.

To avoid heavy regulation, it argued, the financial system needs to regulate itself; uphold its own moral and professional code; put first not its own profitability but the customers it is ultimately here to serve. The system needs a stronger alignment of interest between intermediary and the consumer. Above all it needs transparency. The public and the pension funds who support the City and Wall Street need to know how the money is being spent and who is being paid how much to achieve what.

Without this trust, the system will risk loss of confidence.

But the City and Wall Street have proved themselves largely immune to this enlightened self interest. Investment banks have chosen to judge their success less by the contribution they make to the real economy, than the winnings they can earn in the casino economy in the short term. Unprotected by transparency or values, they have started to collapse under the weight of their own imprudence.

Mark Goyder

Cynthia Carroll is the CEO of Anglo- American and today she spoke at a Chatham House event on companies, development and accountability.

She certainly got a dose of the last of these three. In the audience was a man from Action Aid. The charity had released a report suggesting that people resettled in their Limpopo development had been forced to surrender vital land against their will. The company was asked if it would release its local labour plans. and was it really serious in its commitments to look after stakeholders.

Cynthia was well prepared, but she was also passionate. Action Aid had not consulted the company until the eve of publication of their report. Anglo found many inaccuracies. The company has moved 860 out of 956 households in the region so far. The move had been to ancestral lands previously inhabited by indigenous people. The standards of housing were much higher – she had the photographs with her to prove it.

The accusations of water contamination to the school caused by tailings from the mine were wrong: the school was upstream not downstream from the mine. There was , tests showed, no similarity between the water from the mine and the water at the school. The true problem at the school was contamination from the pit latrines.

So far so detailed. But then a flash of conviction and passion from this unusual CEO, speaking with her four children in front of her ad listening to every word.

“I am proud of what we have done. We have built churches, we have built schools we have put the community on a footing it has never seen before.

When we go into a place we aim to do the right thing wherever we go.

We want to be central to improving the community where we work. |We want to establish a future for the generations to come in that place. We are looking for collaborative engagement with NGOs, not adversarial relationships. We can sit here and trade points all night. We want to work with people with whom we can make things better. “

I believed Cynthia Carroll. She had her facts – and her photographic evidence – but she had more. She had heart and pride in the company she spoke for.

And the man from Action Aid? He did not have the chance to come back, but I was left with the strong impression that the charity was looking for a stick to beat the company with in public rather than looking for an opportunity to improve things for people in the area.

Why do NGOs always kick on the same few companies, the ones that tend to be trying the hardest and doing the most?

These were the words of Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks on 4 June, delivering the British Brands Lecture on the subject “Can brands save the world? I hope so.”

A lecture by Richard is both a shock to the system and an injection of hope.

Here is a generation y entrepreneur. No formality. A vivid advocate of the idea that business can be and must be a force for good.

The message was as untainted and free of additives as one of his products.

• Capitalism has won (as in earlier centuries did successively religion and politics)
• It has brilliant achievements to its name
• But also unintended and undesirable consequences including the warming of the planet and the continued impoverishment of the poorest nations on earth
• Which we with our access to global information now have no excuse to ignore.

So let us in business commit to leave things a little better than we found them.

For Innocent that is achieved by a combination of among other things:

• Product – only making drinks that are nutritionally positive
• Supply chain – Innocent are currently paying a 30% premium on pineapples to achieve an ethical supply chain
• Packaging – Innocent spent 4 years developing the worlds’ first recyclable bottle and are now happy to share their know-how with others who want to do the same
• Energy – using sustainable energy and persuading their biggest supplier to do the same
• Sharing profits – giving away 10% on the basis that any decent business can manage on the remaining 90%

But alongside the powerful examples which he shared, there was something else I noticed.

A week earlier I had been taking part in an equally honest but much more suited discussion of senior business people. One of them said to me “Don’t you get fed up with businesses which just spend their time mouthing the right things, when they take action, doing things which sound green but make little real difference?”

I agreed. And I argued that what we needed was some tomorrow’s PR. Don’t claim to be perfect. Tell it like it is. Warn that there aren’t easy choices. Invite the listener into the dilemma.

This is what I was hearing from Richard. He didn’t believe that Innocent’s ethical approach made that much difference to sales - 2-3% perhaps. That was not the point. It just happened to be the way Innocent wanted to do business. He wouldn’t be able to pay the 30% premium on pineapples for ever, but he was prepared to take the risk to stimulate the necessary rise in standards. He shared the current dilemma with us of a challenge from the USA where a young business had started to market chocolate under the same name. He explained why he had provisionally concluded that they would have to invoke their legal rights to protect the Innocent brand.

His best answer was to a sophisticated question about whether he preferred a business with an ethical product which was making no other effort to make society better, or a business with a harmful product that was making a great effort.

“Its like what we say about a fancy dress party. Anything is a good effort. Just turning up with a sheet over your head and saying boo and pretending to be a ghost is a bit lame but it’s better than not trying. The best will do a lot more.”

Big business can be just as principled as small; making sugary drinks is not necessarily bad. You can’t blame simply food manufacturers if American children get overweight. Doing the right thing does not always pay but that is not the main reason for doing it. When McDonald’s turn their attention to climate change and nutrition they can be society’s biggest agent of change.

This was a candid - and humorous - statement of the case that business could be a force for good.

The examples - some of which I hope we will soon be displaying on www.forceforgood.com - are different, the style is self-deprecating; the ambitions are massive but the social expectations managed; the desire to do well and make a profit is undisguised, but so is the determination to make a difference.

He inherited a confrontational process and has been working to turn it into a collaborative one. He does not preach at companies or governments or activists.

His efforts are another example of the process described in the “Frameworks” section of the Tomorrow’s Global Company report”; we are seeing the steady emergence of soft law in new areas. It starts with codes and multi-stakeholder agreements, and before long individual governments are coming in.  there emerges a patchwork quilt of, on one side, statements of   good practice, and on the other, protest and direct action. The result is that companies start thinking and behaving differently. It may be the fear of trouble. It may be the hope of enhanced reputation; it may even be corporate conscience. Whatever the motivation this is how the foundations are laid for new constraints on corporate behaviour.

The writing is on the wall.

Progressive companies have long since started working out not simply what their obligations are in this area, but what they need to do to check if they are living up to those obligations. Those with their radars off risk crashing into the hillside.

The Tomorrow’s Company view of this is the familiar one. Don’t kick off your human rights process in a vacuum. Start with what you stand for. Then ask what your corporate values mean in the context of your own and society’s desire to respect human rights. Listen to your stakeholders and what they are telling you.. Don’t take short cuts and don’t feel obliged to do everything they ask of you. Work through what it means for you your particular business. Also what you can do with real conviction - not just out of compliance.

Ruggie’s report has a threefold focus. One of the three elements is the human rights framework provided by the state. A second is about the due diligence applied by companies. The third is about how those suffering from human rights abuses may seek redress.

Listening to Ruggie, I learned something (see comment later) else that encouraged me.

When one questioner asked how an investor seeking to maximise value for shareholders reconciled this with a duty to stakeholders in an area like this Ruggie’s answer was simple. First he said it has long been established in law that boards must use their judgement in how they choose to maximise value for shareholders.

Second he kept quoting the wording of the UK Companies Act of 2006, in which it is made clear that in exercising their duty directors need to have regard to the implications of their behaviour towards all their stakeholders and decide which of these relationships might have a material impact on their ability to generate value.

So now I learn that the UK framework of law whose key logic was supplied by Tomorrow’s Company is being quoted around the world by the man charged with helping business, governments and civil society make sense of the way forward on human rights.

I realised that Tomorrow’s Company has done more than most to help bring about the frameworks in which these issues may be resolved. The legal framework that has evolved out of its work is now being held up as a model to law reformers in other parts of the world.

From slave labour through to political repression - human rights present companies with some of their biggest dilemmas. But there is an approach which is helping them and lawmakers through the minefield and it is increasingly influencing the legal framework. It is the approach which we started by calling an inclusive approach; the UK lawmakers called the enlightened shareholder approach.

What Tomorrow’s Company has since added, through the approach of its most recent Tomorrow’s Global Company report, is the recognition that companies need the right frameworks, and the determination that companies themselves have to take the initiative in seeing these frameworks established. This, along with redefining success and embedding values, is the key to progress for a global company that wants to be admired and trusted as a well as financially successful.

1 May. London immobilised by storms, floods, Mayday demos, Mayoral elections plus a few decades of infrastructure neglect. A stimulating day started with discussions with an expert on corporate governance in Germany.

So here’s a paradox. If you look at our material on ownership, you will find us worrying over the apparent erosion of the stewardship of companies by their owners. Impersonal methods are taking hold: there is a vacuum of accountability as hedge funds and formulaic investment becomes more important. This leaves more and more power in the hands of the management – and to whom are they accountable? There is no-one to police the way they pay themselves.

In Germany the problem can be the reverse. Large blocks of shares held by a family or a few large owners. Rights denied to minority shareholders. Little accountability on remuneration. So the opposite end of the ownership spectrum, but the same result: little accountability.

12 hours later my working day ends as it had begun – at a debate hosted by YouGovStone and sponsored by SAB Miller on globalisation – who holds the power.

First there is a debate about when China will overtake America. Why does it matter who is topdog, I wonder, since we are all going to have to collaborate if we are to get our carbon emissions below 400 parts per million.

There is the usual disagreement about human rights. Brian (Lord ) Griffiths of Goldman Sachs says he has been going to China for nearly 20 years; when he first went there Christians were persecuted. Now the Mayor of Beijing has recognised and accommodated the Christian churches; things change, but without fuss. He thinks business is a big Trojan horse that global companies have made the difference of moving China from being a totalitarian to an authoritarian society.

Andrew Neil is, more cynical. When you are being beaten by a bamboo stick what difference does it make whether the wielder is authoritarian or totalitarian? Clever words but I am still with Brian Griffiths.

Power today, he goes on to argue, is with the BRICS, the knowledge workers, the masters of oil, gas and natural resources. Other panellists added:

• The media
• The producers of food and other key commodities.
• The investment banks

Some worried about the return of protectionism. Interestingly, although there was much talk of the wall of money building up in the Gulf no-one added the power of the new investors themselves. No-one asked what was happening to ownership.

I waved my arms all evening to catch the chairman’s eye but I failed. Now I know how it feels to be one of those minority shareholders in a European company where the family barons still control all the votes!

Mark Goyder

The company is the vehicle that creates wealth. What happens to an economy and a society when major investors start to pressure boards to do what is right for them rather than what is right for the company?

It is time we tackled the confusion surrounding the rights and responsibilities of ownership in our fast-changing capital markets; and that is exactly what Tomorrow's Company intends to do over the coming months in our new project on ownership.

Sydney

This is actually being written on the last leg of the journey back to London from Bangkok.

I had naively settled into my seat and spread my possessions around me in the untidy fashion that makes me feel at home. I hadn't realised they all had to enter Thailand, following a tortuous route past shops and security checks and so on board again. I braced myself for Thailand, stepped into the terminal and heard over the airport loudspeakers that very Asian refrain "Over the sea to Skye".

Unlike sunny and largely dry Melbourne, Sydney has had a rotten summer - storms and floods, mostly. Planes between the two cities were being delayed and cancelled as lightning storms temporarily closed Sydney. I was two hours late and dinner with friend Anne was delayed. Anne - who works for a major US multinational shocked me by saying the IT in the city was primitive and it could take her 15 minutes to send an email.

That was before I tried sending an email from the Sheraton. "Australia really does seem a long way away when you work here and people in America don't seem to take emails from here nearly as seriously and then they schedule teleconferences at 4 in the morning and wonder why no-one shows up!"

She also says Sydney suffers from a serious talent shortage: those who are here tend to have done their stint in Europe or the States and come back to raise families, but they have to work intensely..at least until 4.30 on Friday when everyone in her office stops for drinks in the office that appear to be paid for by the firm and go on until 7.30!

The talent shortage is confirmed at the KPMG hosted lunch. The average age in the firm is 29: people are getting responsibility early, which makes it interesting when they second them to a talent-starved government department where they are working alongside 55 year old public servants!

Anne walks me back through driving rain from The Rocks to the hotel at Darling Harbour. We step through torrents of water and back at the hotel I resort to stuffing newspaper inside my only pair of shoes to dry them for the morning.

Friday morning - last day of the tour. I wake at 5, for the first time discombobulated by travel, and do some work before jogging and then breakfasting in rare Darling harbour sunshine near the monorail.

I manage a podcast interview with Bill Beerworth, a sort of Australian Philip Goldenberg (the UK company lawyer who first alerted Tomorrow’s Companies to the failure of UK directors to understand their duties). Bill is a confident, extrovert, sharp and passionate lawyer who bemoans the inability of Australian business or its law system to think holistically about success. He now runs his own investment bank and is very enthusiastic having read the report that this should be widely propagated and perhaps used as a catalyst to influence a review of company law.

We have our own talent shortage. There have been one or two cancellations for the lunch and the man from the pharmaceutical trade association is obviously in tomorrow's trade association as he hasn't made today at all. Professor Thomas Clarke is there - the same Tom Clarke who, when professor of Corporate Governance in Leeds in 1994 organised a consultative conference with us on the original interim report of 1994 and hired a special train to get London delegates there and back in good  humour. He is now Professor at UTS here and a visiting professor in Paris - who says Corporate Governance is dull?!

Tom has compiled a huge book on corporate governance - about 600 pages. He persuaded Adrian Cadbury to write the short preface and was speculating about how to make the most of Adrian's fame in promoting such a book. He is now seriously considering my suggestion that he call it a short essay on corporate governance by Adrian Cadbury - with a long postscript by Thomas Clarke!

Also at the lunch there is the chairman of an energy company, three CEOs, and a think-tanker.

Ian Barlow introduces proceedings as always simply but with great endorsement of TC and our standing, and how he and KPMG had found the challenges of working with us so valuable. Ian is a supporter rare in his level of belief and loyalty and it has been fascinating to watch him at work with KPMG colleagues around the world - a real federal global business of 110,000 people where no-one has to co-operate with anyone else. Ian will ask and reciprocate favours of these colleagues whose respect and friendship he has earned. This is the global company as global network. Ian shows the same courtesy and generosity to TC.

Ian's father is Sir William Barlow, a distinguished engineer and CEO. His mother's parents came to Melbourne at the beginning of the war when they were on a sales trip - sold papermaking equipment - and got stranded here in Australia, leaving their teenage children in England.

Incidentally when we caught up in Sydney Ian's feedback was that the Melbourne debate had been excellent and said he likes the store of examples "from your excellent random access memory". He had the same high opinion of the Sydney discussion.

The question of inequality comes up, as in Melbourne. We are asked how all this report fits with the Millennium Development Goals; about whether the report implies that national government has become unimportant as business becomes more global; soon as in Melbourne the discussion turns to the capital market short termism which most people around this table feel has disfigured business and handicaps it from addressing a wider role. Chris Jordan, the extrovert KPMG Sydney Chairman shows interest in the vital question of values and asks if their presence or absence can be measured. We talk about the idea of the "behavioural audit trail".

The lunch is superb in the fragments of time I get to touch it - something called "marron's tails" which are even better than fat tiger prawns and go so well with those crisp aussie whites!