Courtesy of Pam Martens
Richard Bowen, Testifying Before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Editor’s Note: Richard Bowen is the former Citigroup Senior Vice President who repeatedly alerted his superiors in writing that potential mortgage fraud was taking place in his division. At one point, Bowen emailed a detailed description of the problem to top senior management, including Robert Rubin, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary and then Chairman of the Executive Committee at Citigroup. Bowen’s reward for elevating serious ethical issues up the chain of command was to be relieved of most of his duties and told not to come to the office. Bowen testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in 2010. In 2011, Bowen had the courage to pull back the curtain on Citigroup’s moral code on the CBS program 60 Minutes. Bowen is today a Professor of Accounting at the University of Texas at Dallas and speaks widely on the ethical breakdowns that led to the 2008 Wall Street financial collapse. Professor Bowen’s analysis of Citigroup’s latest foray into changing its ethical culture appears below.
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Who’s Trying Now to Save Citigroup’s Soul?
By Richard Bowen: March 27, 2017
The headline in last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal captured my immediate attention. The Banker-Turned-Seminarian Trying to Save Citigroup’s Soul… What??
Supposedly Citigroup is taking a “new” approach to the cultural and other issues they have had for years and have hired Dr. David Miller, a Princeton University professor, theologian and former banker to be their “on call ethicist.” Dr. Miller heads the University’s Faith & Work Initiative and has worked with Citi intermittently over the last three years. He says, “You need banking, just like you need pharmaceuticals.”
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