Tomorrow's Capital Markets Launch

An invitation to work with Tomorrow's Company  

to set new incentive structures for  

a sustainable, prosperous and equitable world

When: Thursday, November 29, 2012 from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM (GMT)

Where: LSO St Luke's, 161 Old Street, EC1V 9NG, London

There is shared and widespread concern over how financial markets are working. As economic prospects remain uncertain there has been a breakdown of trust and confidence. The relationship between business and society has become corrosive, weakening business's license to operate and imposing increasing costs on business and finance.

Our challenge now is to strengthen the stability of the global system in a way that does not require excessive and counter-productive capital adequacy regulations, and other interventions. The only way to do this is to change cultures and behaviours, regenerating the system from within.

The purpose of this event is to bring together key players in the system, who help shape how it works, to work together in finding out how we can overcome these issues and create new solutions.

All too often we look for structural solutions in isolation, but unless we tackle issues of culture and behaviour we will not find lasting stability - which above means we need to understand the role that incentives play.

Over the last year, Tomorrow's Company with UNEP-FI  has been working with a number of key players in the financial system (Aviva Investors, Hermes Fund Managers, and UBS, together with BLP and Korn/Ferry Whitehead Mann) to set out an agenda for the way ahead.  

This is very much Tomorrow's Company's work and view, but I am pleased they have found that many within capital markets know that significant change in this area is needed. Respondents recognise that we need a solution that is systemic and long-term, but also comes to terms with complexity of markets and the detail of how incentives work in practice.

- Paul Abberley, Interim Chief Executive, Aviva Investors

This work resulted in a report, Tomorrow's Capital Markets, that was shared at Rio+20. The report tackles a number of challenging issues and discusses:

• The changing role of capital markets

• The lack of alignment between incentives and the interests of beneficiaries

• The need for increased transparency on the structure of incentives and the need to show a clear link between reward and value creation

• The need for strong leadership in setting the right, firm-wide, cultural context within which hard incentives such as remuneration operate.

This event shares these findings in order to take this project forward: designing what new incentives would look like, within a systems perspective which sets out the other enabling conditions and interventions required.

To do this we are working with key players and other key stakeholders, and we are also building a leadership group and a critical mass of capability to take this project forward.

We expect to launch a further report at the 2013 UNEP-FI biennial roundtable in Beijing.

During this event, we will be discussing these issues with groups representing each part of the system. We will then bring the conversation together so we can take a view across the whole system.

The event is designed around dialogue between those who are active in the system, therefore places are limited and your registration will be confirmed subject to availability.