Charity is optional, respect is not
ENOUGH has been said about the sexism at that revolting grope-fest, the Presidents Club dinner at the Dorchester, so I’ll spare you any more anger on that point.
The tawdry event shines a light on another area of City life equally riddled with hypocrisy and self-deception: charity.
Contrary to popular views, a great deal of generosity takes place within the Square Mile. I’m a Freeman of the City of London myself and the historic trade guilds and companies including mine, the Stationers, do fantastic work for good causes.
I’ve met some City people who are plainly and gloriously sincere. Fund manager Jonathan Ruffer, for instance, who prays every morning between 5am and 6.30am before his porridge, and who has poured £30million of his own cash into staging a ‘son et lumiere’ spectacle in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, in the hope of reviving the local economy. He bought a set of paintings by Spanish master Francisco de Zurbaran to stop the Church of England selling them to a Ukrainian oligarch with a plan to set up a world-class centre of Spanish art in his native North East. Eccentric, maybe – marvellous, definitely.
But there is an undercurrent with certain business people, who give the impression they are trying to use their charitable donations as a magic shield to deflect criticism from other, more questionable behaviour.
Of course, this is futile. Giving to good causes does not excuse or cancel out other poor conduct: groping at a charity event is still groping. And often, the very same individuals who flaunt their munificence can be strangely reluctant to, let’s say, pay tax in the UK – or to make contributions into the company pension fund to ensure their own employees don’t become charity cases in their old age.
Perhaps there was a certain perverse honesty about Persimmon boss Jeff Fairburn’s refusal to say whether he is giving any of his potential £100 million plus bonus to charity. After all, it would not alter the fact that governance failed so miserably at the housebuilder.
And Fairburn cannot be accused of showing off. Charity auctions like the one at the Presidents Club can raise a lot of money, but they are treated by some as opportunities for egotistical display – a chance to boast about the size of their wallets.
Some of the biggest villains in the business world have been flamboyant donors. The late tycoon Robert Maxwell gave very generously – recipients of his bounty included Mother Teresa – but that did not stop him being a repellent and larcenous man. Going further back, Andrew Carnegie’s exploits as one of America’s robber-baron capitalists have been obscured by the mists of time, and he is best remembered in this country for his legacy of public libraries.
In the UK there is not such a culture of high-profile business philanthropy as in the US, but some companies have embraced ‘social responsibility’ as part of their PR. I wish they wouldn’t. Behaving properly towards people and the environment should be taken for granted as a minimum expectation, not something to boast about. The illfated Co-op Bank is a case in point – it endlessly semaphored its credentials as an ‘ethical lender’ that did not advance money to ‘bad’ businesses like arms dealers and cigarette sellers.
None of which stopped it from such dire boardroom standards that it drowned in its own debt and is now in the hands of hedge funds. Carillion is another one with a list of environmental and social accolades as long as your arm, and much good that did.
Charity is great, and so is corporate social responsibility. But it is not an alternative to, or a substitute for, integrity in the running of the business itself.
That includes treating women with respect, whether they are boardroom colleagues or female staff at a dinner. Charity is optional – being a decent corporate citizen is not.
Some of the world’s biggest business villains have been huge donors