In 2007, Niall Ferguson, a truly respectable British guru of financial history, had this to say on the film Mary Poppins: “Recent events on both sides of the Atlantic have made it not merely desirable but imperative that the world’s leading bankers ‘and their clients’ [my emphasis] watch this movie.”
Ferguson was referring to the scene epitomised in the movie by Mr. Banks’s decision to take his children to the bank.
A few months after Ferguson’s witty remark, loss of customer confidence and a crisis of trust in bankers became a hallmark of the great financial crisis. If only they had seen it!
Perhaps we would have been spared the catastrophe.
Some months ago Disney revealed that, after half a century, and after the 2013 Saving Mr. Banks, they are now working on a remake of this “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” musical movie money-maker. Furthermore, throughout this year, this musical will be touring various Englishtheatres. Why all the interest in this production?
There may be various reasons, including prospects of good financial returns. It’s good to make money, decently, especially if promoting values. But maybe the producers are becoming more aware that, intrinsically, people yearn for values to be valued.
Our life, be it private or public, not only involves and depends on people, but revolves around a complex sphere of human action and reaction. It entails relationships between different parties, hopefully guided by a set of legal and contractual parameters.
May the spirit of the movie Mary Poppins be rekindled in the hearts of all of us
But if we may find it difficult enough to comply with the law, how and why can we venture into the realm of ethics? Because nothing does it better, and because we are menaced by an unprecedented crisis of lack of trust and confidence in institutions.
Thanks to the immediacy of the media and their sterling “name and shame” attitude, we are engulfed by intricate “rackets”of corruption, and not justtennis ones. Finance, football, politics, automotive industry... the list goes on.
Whether or not we manage to transcend this new dark era ‘enlightened’ by its under-estimation of integrity, depends on each and every one of us. Integrity requires no rules because values are not prescribed by an edict. We all know that our actions can and do influence others, for better or for worse. We are all moral or immoral agents.
Rules, laws and contracts, which are a prime requisite for every society, acknowledge and safeguard the rights and obligations of parties by clearly stipulating the boundaries in which the parties can operate. But they do not encompass virtue.
Notwithstanding how robust laws, rules and contracts are, in practice, the parties involved remain vulnerable and contingent to each other. In all relationships, parties can easily undermine each other. In other words, parties are interdependent on each other’s trust, values but above all actions. Behaviour supersedes beliefs.
Investing in values pays. Perhaps that may be one of the reasons why, a few weeks ago, two major institutions operating in the local financial sector included talks about the role of integrity-based ethics, in addition to their existing and indispensable compliance based ones.
May the spirit of the movie Mary Poppins be rekindled in the hearts of all of us. After all she managed to ‘bail out’ Mr. Banks from the greed of society and its associated obsessions and anxieties, leading him to value and embrace humour, songs but especially to appreciate the beauty of the family.
For our children and grandchildren’s sake, can we re-prioritise? Perhaps, as the late and great John Lennon sang: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.”
After all, as Mary Poppins and Co. sing in the original London cast version of the story, “Anything can happen if you let it”.
Tony Micallef is a retired banker with a Masters in business ethics.