Street Smarts: Linking Professional Conduct With Shareholder Value in the Securities Indu Stry

This book is a forceful call to action for Wall Street leaders to strengthen and protect their shareholders' value by instituting and maintaining much higher professional standards.
Smith and Walter argue that it is not enough for firms to rely on surveillance and compliance efforts to prevent their people from stepping over the line of legal and appropriate conduct; reputations in the finance world are too important. Connecting professional conduct to shareholder value, the authors call for immediate action. The industry, they contend, needs to create an environment in which each firm develops its leaders and individual managers to take responsibility for shaping and upholding the standards through creative and supportive employee development and retention programs.

Roy Smith is a professor of finance at the Stern School of Business, New York University.