“Treat Customers Like Family”, Says Chairman

Since the financial crisis we have heard a lot about how corporate governance is the essence of a business, but – until now – very little about corporate culture, its daily face. While the United States debated the culture at Wells Fargo earlier this week, the U.K.’s corporate governance watchdog, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) was continuing its project on corporate culture with an event at Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. In July the FRC released its report into corporate culture, covered here on Forbes. The FRC is custodian of the U.K. Corporate Governance Code which will be 25 years old in 2017. “The code has been an effective force for good over the last quarter of a century. Its ‘comply or explain’ approach enables companies to have flexibility in the way they govern their business”, said Sir Win Bischoff, Chairman of the FRC. But he acknowledged “some very public incidences of poor conduct.”