May 6, 2008
Coming to a b-school near you: white-collar criminals
Students at Canada’s Richard Ivey School of Business will have an unusual guest speaker on Thursday: Nick Leeson, the rogue trader who served four years in prison after bringing down Barings Bank. Mr Leeson will aid the students in a case study analysing the bank’s collapse, while giving tips on the safeguards needed to prevent similar debacles. Afterwards, the students will take part in the “Ivey Ring Tradition Ceremony”, in which they pledge “to act ethically and honestly in all their activities”.
Ivey confirms that it is paying an undisclosed sum to Mr Leeson to come over. The website of the agency that represents him says his normal fee for an after dinner speech ranges from £6,000-£10,000 ($11,800-$19,700; €7,600-€12,700). To give a little perspective, Sir Geoff Hurst, England’s 1966 World Cup hero, costs £2,500-£5,000.
The Canadian business school says that Mr Leeson makes it clear in his presentations that he “deeply regrets” his actions and that his sentence was justified. “For future business leaders, it’s important not to just focus on success, but to also hear how people get themselves into trouble,” it adds.
A recent article in Business Week shows that Ivey is by no means alone in bringing in an ex-con to lecture its young thrusters. The piece focuses on “one of the busiest convicted felons on the B-school speaking circuit”: Walter Pavlo Jr, who graduated with an MBA from the Stetson School of Business at Mercer University and later served a prison sentence for fraud conducted while he worked at MCI. ”All you need to know to cook the books you learn in your first semester of accounting,” Business Week quoted him as telling students at Purdue University.
Perhaps Conrad Black’s people are already fielding requests for business school appearances after his release from prison.
Do you think the practical benefits of giving business school students first-hand exposure to reformed white-collar criminals exceeds the grubbiness of paying them to appear? Please comment below.
Maybe I’m being a little naive, but if people suffered from Mr. Leeson’s actions, wouldn’t be more adequate that he would direct this money to some charity ?
Posted by: Jorge Lucio | May 6th, 2008 at 3:07 pm | Report this commentIt seems more like a case study on ‘what should you do to follow my footsteps and not get caught’. Are we training criminals or business leaders? Mafia lords are running out of talent?Ethics failed long time ago, just look at the banking mess cooked up by the finest MBA minds.
Posted by: Louis Catcher | May 6th, 2008 at 8:33 pm | Report this commentI think white collar criminals should be allowed to speak to student’s as it will give them an insight in how not to act within a corporate setting. Corporate Ethics seem to have become strained during the latest credit crisis and lessons should be learned about how to treat all stakeholders ethically and honestly. As for their fee’s, if institutions are willing to pay then fair enough. This is a free market, people like Nick Leeson have paid their debt to society.
Posted by: Bryan Train | May 6th, 2008 at 9:48 pm | Report this commentThe fee and choice of speakers is a choice of every business school. The problem is how the curricula is organized and whar are the messages conveied to the students. Do not no this or dont let yourself get caught?
Posted by: Nelson Mendes | May 6th, 2008 at 10:32 pm | Report this commentWith all due respect very idea of MBA, with the focus as it should be, on shareholder value creation and bottom line performance tends to create moral hazard problems.
Furthermore, anyone who wants to take an MBA wishes to make money (usually lots of it). It is only a question of asking oneself if the end justifies the means.
It worries me is in the lecture, or in one other day there isnt the other side. People who lost their jobs and cant make a very good living on the conference tour, or shareholders who lost money and some of them,their children college funds or their savings, and that isnt a feel good lecture, and worse even the speakers come virtually for free…