Death By Meeting

How many managers can identify with my heading today? Sometimes a business day can just seem an endless stream of meetings, with little chance to do more than answer a few emails and return the odd call in between. In fact, sometimes it seems that all managers do is meet and do not actually DO anything.

Meetings in business are of course a necessity. In fact, I would argue that in times of a recession, it is important to meet MORE rather than less.

I have said it many times before, the speed at which this recession is striking is breath-taking - one minute the business looks pretty sound and the forecast is good, the next sees sales collapse, orders dry up, forecast dwindle and cashflow decline sharply. While small businesses can adapt quickly, too many get caught in rich veins of business or a few large customers which are fantastic when the market is strong but hit very hard when the market goes down.

Meetings Are Crucial

The need for faster, more effective meetings is paramount in times of hardship.

As market conditions and customer buying patterns change almost daily, it is critical to meet more often to make sure you are on top of what is going on.

Many firms I talk to wait until the monthly management meeting to discuss the forecast discrepancies, as a good for instance. With a fixed agenda and several topics for discussion, this is the 'formal' stake in the ground or governance for most firms. Again, when times are good, that is well and fine, but why wait 4 weeks to discuss and action news of a major lost piece of business or the withdrawal of a lending facility when it could have a profound affect on the business in bad times?

I have seen many managers with their 'One Minute Manager' or 'How to Run Effective Meetings' books - these are great tools, don't get me wrong, but it is a sad comment that most managers have little clue as to what an effective or productive meeting is. It seems many just call meetings to occupy their daily time and do not actually achieve a great deal other than fuel a cycle of more meetings. The fact is, instinctively knowing what the business issues are and how to go about solving them should a basic skill for every manager. Yet, they more often than not either stick to given formulae or delve into text books for answers, when the going gets tough.

Priorities and Measurement

I don't have a secret elixir or recipe for managing in a crisis but what I do know is that very quickly, the executive team need to decide the priorities of the business, then have some key measurements of its progress against these priorities and then have a process to review the progress and adjust the business to put it back on the right course or remedy the situation. For this, I advocate more regular, shorter, more succinct and action-based meetings with a rapid cascade of actions after.

Deciding the priorities really comes back down to understanding what is going on in every part of the business to a granular level of detail. I cannot stress enough that in the sales and marketing areas, for instance, there is a huge requirement to review every deal reported on the forecast and have an understanding of all the dynamics in the marketing areas.

What I mean for sales is not a wishy-washy look at the forecast but a face-to-face, eye-to-eye review with every salesperson and a detailed look at every deal of significance and look at the situation of each customer. It's time for hard questions about every deal and its chances, about every customer and their situation and what every salesperson is doing to remedy shortfalls and to replace business that will not happen. It is also time to look hard at what existing customers are doing, what are they experiencing in the recession and how their buying patterns may change.

In marketing, it is about looking at how every penny is spent and how it can be geared toward supporting the sales team in remedying a shortfall. In short, it is getting alignment - through finance, operations, administration, IT etc - the business needs to be fully aligned to the common priorities.

These then become the template for the short review and action meetings.

Rocket Science?

Too often sales and marketing executives run their teams with wishful thinking - believing deals will come good or that customers will buy even when the data is obviously refuting this. Then, when all goes to pot, the same executives are the first to hand over control to the finance team and cost cutters and then bemoan the fact they don't understand the business. Theirs is a world of simple arithmetic and they don't see the long term as by the time the company is handed to them, the sole priority is survival.

Avoiding this is not rocket science - it is simple, practical management. If cashflow is declining and sales falling - the adage 'cash is king' becomes the mantra. The accountants can certainly batten down the hatches and collect cash more voraciously, pay suppliers on longer terms and drastically reduce costs. But viewing it from a holistic position, the salesforce and marketing can be refocused to drive a short term opportunity for more cash based sales via special promotions, targeted marketing and negotiating current deals to bring them and the cash in faster. Such priorities can be easily measured and reviewed very regularly, weekly, even daily. If one offer does not bite, try another - if one set of customers don't respond, try others.

More regular, more tactical management meetings really do drive the business around the twists and turns of a recession rather than waiting for the formal ones.

Cut Non-Priority Meetings

It is a direct outcome of this thinking that allows managers to quickly recognise what meetings are simply not essential. If the meeting does not help the business' priorities then do not have it - it's that simple.

Prepare in Advance

How many times, because business seems an endless succession of meetings, do you enter meetings where either you have not prepared or at least one of the other participants has not prepared for the meeting. Too often, there are 'I will have to get back to you' or 'the data was not available' or 'I got called into another meeting beforehand' given as an excuse. The fact is, if the priorities are not priorities for everyone then people will find excuses and revert to type, wasting time and energy on non-priority tasks.

Recessions are not forgiving - ignore them at your peril. If there is one time in your life when you deliberately skip non-important meetings then this is it.

In a recession, there should be no excuses. If managers do not prepare, there should be little room afforded and no tolerance as it is managing for a failure. And for the excuse of the 'data was not available' that too is symptomatic of non-aligned business processes. If IT is not aligned with the priority of producing data ready for the preparation, then a step is missing or again managers are not tuned in.

There is no room for non-alignment.

Use Technology

Using web and telephone based technology allows you to meet more people, more regularly and with less impact of dead time like travelling on the business. It's more green too which means it not only is better for the environment but it is cheaper for the business.

Stop Looking For Answers

From Government to business, we hear everyday that this is a global crisis and so it effectively answers all questions on performance. There is always an excuse.

That is not true. We know that many famous businesses actually started during a recession (e.g, Cisco, Facebook)and many more actually thrive during them. They do it because they do not look for excuses and answers, they look for opportunities, prioritise, align, measure, review and adjust. This comes from rapid planning, executing and a less focus on 'going through the motions' of business like having just the one monthly management meeting.

Companies who survive or thrive in a recession are absolutely on top of their business and understand exactly how they stand and what they are doing for the future, in every part of the company, from top down and bottom up.

I have used the example of Aviva changing its UK subsidiary's name, Norwich Union, during a recession with a £ multi-million series of high profile advertising. Within weeks, they announce bad results, lose 33% of their market value and cut 1,900 UK jobs. This is monumental hubris and lack of management in a crisis. They just did what it said on the monthly meeting minutes and ignored the world around them until it was too late. In fact, it could even be worse than that - they may have actually decided to spend all the money KNOWING the results were bad.

That would actually be close to criminal negligence - deliberately diverting funds into stupid marketing that could have saved jobs. But it illustrates what I mean - priorities have to change in a recession.

Practical Solutions

I have blogged endlessly on the subject of managing during a recession yet I still see companies around me falling into the same traps. Often we get Dragon's Den heroes talking of their fantastic anecdotes and what has served them well. Duncan Bannatyne, who is one of the best of them, actually told the story of one of his managers calling and telling him a rival gym was putting leaflets on cars in the car parks suggesting a £50 reduction for signing up. Bannatyne gave the entrepreneur's response - only 5% of the City's population paid for a gym, so he wanted to focus on the 95% who didn't pay for a gym as there was a much bigger opportunity than just nicking customers from another gym.

But this was not practical advice - certainly not in a recession. If he is not providing enough value to his current members that they see a £50 offer as a good alternative, then he is going to lose customers. What is more, we all know it costs roughly 4 to 5 times as much to find a new customer than to keep an old one. The number one priority for every business must be to KEEP as many of its customers as it can - and if a £50 leaflet on a car window is taking customers away, then Bannatyne's business model is flawed - and ever more so in a recession when customers may walk just because they cannot afford it. Common sense would say the market opportunity on a 'nice to have' item like a gym will diminish in a recession - current cash paying customers are jewels in such an environment. In fact, in a recession, his advice could not have been worse.

But sometimes that's where entrepreneurs fail - they get too caught up in their own world to see the outside. I think Bannatyne was just illustrating a point because I cannot believe he got where he is today on such a course of action.

Sound Thinking

Again I don't have all the answers - but as an entrepreneur who has managed businesses through several recessions, I have learnt the hard way that applying the same principles in a recession is business suicide. Many of today's business people would not have gone through even one recession let alone a few, so solid thinking and good advice is actually very valuable - pithy anecdotes on the road to success from famous people often glosses over the point.

The question always remains - what does that mean to my business?

I have made the offer before, but I am very happy to offer my practical advice to businesses. Please contact me at nigel.dunn@calxeurope.com or 0207 193 2356.

Jaqui Does Expenses

Jaqui Smith's marriage is 'strong' - she will not be doing a 'Tessa' and ditching her husband after he was caught viewing porn films. Good for her.

I still think MPs just don't seem to get it. It has nothing to do with porn films, it's about abuse of public funds. The fact that she and her husband, who incidentally 'works' for her according to her expense reports, regularly claim for films watched on TV, porn or not, is the crux of the issue. For most people on business trips, what you do in your private time in your hotel is entirely up to you, just don't expect to expense it, whether it is 'Surf's Up' or 'Debbie does Dallas'. The fact she claims her first residence is a room at her sister's house in London while the family live somewhere else, is just another minor blip.

More Bad News

Over the weekend we got the more revelations of Labour Ministers with their snouts deep in the trough of expenses - this time it was Geoff Hoon who was making sure he 'was ok, Jack' - he of the famous 'they're not alright, Jack' activities which allowed an army he dispatched to Iraq to arrive without the proper equipment, like desert boots.

At least he was cosy and ok in his nice 3 homes.

Geoff is one of those incompetent Politicians who keeps returning like a bad penny in the Mandelson fashion. He, as usual, insists he has done nothing wrong in claiming second home allowances for his family home in Derbyshire while enjoying an apartment in Admiralty House for free while serving time as one of the worst Defence Secretaries in memory - he also was claiming for rent of an apartment in London at the same time.

It isn't that he thinks he has not broken rules - that is not the point. The fact of the matter is that he seems to think from a common sense, decency or moral point of view that it is perfectly fine to have the country pay for 3 homes - 2 of them in London while serving as a paid for Politician.

Hoon and Smith are prime examples of people without the moral fabric and ethics to be in charge of policy making because they are too busy making sure they can bend rules sufficiently enough to make an extra bit of money - that takes a crooked mind to do so and that has no place in Government.

Oh No, It's Darling This Time

And Alistair Darling is at the same game - getting free accommodation at 11 Downing Street, he he is claiming allowances for his home in Edinburgh and his flat in London. You may slightly forgive him that he has been a bit forgetful lately, after all he has just missed another 2.7% of deficit rise he forgot about when he last predicted it. Due to his calculator and memory malfunctions he now estimates that by 2015 our deficit will have grown a further £40bn. He and Gordon Brown have stood Canute-like against the tide of Credit Crunch and Recession shouting things like 'it won't affect us as we have a stable economy' at the start and all the way through denying it will affect us harder than most as the IMF has repeatedly said. Suddenly, Darling has admitted the recession is in fact worse than they had predicted and hence yet more borrowing is required.

I wonder how much this wishful thinking and incompetence we are a) going to put with and b) ultimately cost us?

Having just hosted and attended the successful G20 summit, Brown is revelling in his second stint as 'Superman' but how can all these leaders get the sums right to put us back on track when countries like Britain simply cannot add up their problems properly? It really is a guessing game and it hardly inspires hope and confidence that we will properly address the problems if the underlying accounting is complete rubbish.

For all the good the G20 summit has done in getting a common direction, the actual sums involved are a joke if the constituents are guessing the extent of their problems. But, like expenses, the attention to detail is simply not there or cared about. Saving their political skins and making a few bob on the taxpayer account is number one priority.

Always has been, always will be. We need transparency and people we can trust in power - it's not about docking wages or paying money back, it's about fraud.

Aviva - Loco!

You could have bet your house or pension on it. I wrote about whether it was a great thing to market heavily in a recession and used the specific example of Norwich Union's parent, Aviva, taking the opportunity to shove its name change down our throats at the height of the recession.

I could argue all they needed to do was to announce big losses, have 33% of their share value wiped out and then cut 1,900 UK staff - we would all have noticed the name change. Instead, they embarked on a multi-million pound advertising campaign employing the likes of Bruce Willis, Elle McPherson, Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper and McCauley Culkin, to name a few, to tell us that changing their name was the key to future success and vital in a downturn.

Tell that to the 1,900 staff who will face the dole this year.

Corporate Bull

While professional marketeers may argue with me on the amount you should spend to keep your brand alive during a recession, the General Manager in me says there is a time and a place to announce a name change to just to boost the Corporate ego - and at the height of the recession, just before set of bad results and news, is not the time to do so.

This is an illustration of management stupidity and gross negligence. You can see bad results coming and you can plan for it. Marketing in a recession is important but you need to be clever, tactical and do only the things that will get a return for the money.

Corporate name changes and big TV advertising are notorious nebulous activities where it is hard to measure direct results and therefore estimate a proper return on the outlay. I would argue strongly that such moves are just corporate self-abuse at best and so doing them in the middle of a recession is just suicidal and management of the dumbest quality.

I could have predicted the outcome - it was a story writing itself. For the management who sanctioned such high profile spending at this time, they should have been the first of the 1,900 to leave.

Sadly, I will also bet not one of them will be leaving.

Job Done - What's Next?

'This is the day the world came together to fight back against the global recession, not with words but with a plan for global recovery and reform,' said Gordon Brown at the end of what many believe was an astonishing G20 summit.

Astonishing in that just 24 hours earlier, the French were threatening to walk out, the Germans were unhappy at the size of bail outs and China did not want anything that ruined their chances of re-stimulating their economy. Rumours abounded that Barack Obama himself acted as a mediator between the French and Chinese to get agreements.

So What Did We Get?

There were a lot of floral words and nice commitments but the really meaty bits which had a plan attached, was the $1 trillion stimulus package and the consensus on regulation going forward which should be a great deal tougher than before. The French and Germans will feel very cosy after all this, as the stimulus package seemed somewhat restrained given a similar amount was pledged as part of the last stimulus package in the US alone. The good news is that the money goes to the IMF who will in turn pledge around $100bn to help bail out the struggling nations.

Beyond that, we were into the world of platitudes - promote global trade and reject protectionism and build an inclusive, green and sustainable recovery seemed like noble aims but in practice will be very hard to achieve and nebulous to measure. While my theme of transparency was not referred to there was a reference to reforming the international financial institutions under greater scrutiny, looking at bonuses more carefully, financial accounts, tax havens, hedge funds - in general, a far higher level of scrutiny.

Are We Really OK Now Then?

I think everyone realises that the summit could not wave a magic wand and put all to right. But this is probably a distant second. There is broad agreement on a way forward on funding, stimulus and regulation and those are pretty crucial. It was certainly a case of 'Look after your own' in that there was little hope given to less well off nations who were sitting, quite literally open-mouthed, waiting for the developed world to remember them and so the word 'protectionism' to them has a different meaning. But that said, at least we have some way forward.

I think there is a general relief that the magnitude of the new stimulus package is far less than we all worried about. There seems to be an air of restraint and that comes as a blessed relief to taxpayers who waited to see just how much of their future earnings and well being were staked on their behalf.

In some respects we got away with less of a sting than we thought.

Of course, I am far to thick to realise quite where the IMF gets all its money from if we don't have it to give to them and given that we may have to go back there, cap in hand, at some stage, it seems a bit pointless handing over what we haven't got. But that's just my naive self talking. I am sure someone can put me right on that - maybe its like EC rebates.

Hope At Last

What the G20 summit did prove is that in a world of terrible divides, there is the power to drive us to come together with common commitment to tackle issues when they threaten us all.

It is a tragedy that it had to be something which in reality is trivial, to do so. Trivial in the sense that it is the future prosperity of the developed world that was at stake caused by the greed of the minority - if only we could have been meeting to give $1 trillion to the poor, starving and diseased of this world or tackling the consumption of our natural resources or the level of CO2 in our atmosphere - all with the same level of collective commitment to the common good.

Instead it was all about self-preservation. As much as I am happy we got a consensus, once again it will be one of the major missed opportunities of the decade as there will be unlikely a time when the same people meet to discuss other agendas.

Life, indeed, does go on.

Some Good News, At Last?

The average price of homes rose 0.9% last month according to Nationwide. Mortgage approvals rose from 32,000 in January to 38,000 in February. It could be signs that the economy has some 'green shoots' at last - or are they?

The measure of Quantitative Easing (QE) as started by the Bank of England last month has yet to take great effect and so the positive movement cannot be put down to that measure. Besides, in a volte face by Mervyn King in the face of unexpected and bad news of a rise in inflation, it seemed this was no longer the vogue idea.

In response, for the first time 14 years, an auction of National Debt failed as the markets got spooked.

As the G20 country leaders get into full swing today, there will be another crucial time in the City as the next debt auction takes place and the markets will be wary of the outcome. To keep the housing market moving, the theory is that some of that cash has to cascade down to house buyers in the form of more liberal lending terms.

The Dangers

While this is generally received as a good thing, we have yet to agree upon a new structure and strategy for the regulator, the FSA. One of the huge problems that we have faced was the crazy and far too easy terms of lending on houses that got us all delving into our mortgage equity to spend. Northern Rock was not the only bank to lend at over the asset value in its 125% Together mortgages and most banks who lent anything over 80% loan to value (LVT) in the last year or so have seen their buyers actually go into negative equity.

Perhaps it is time to set out the rules properly about sensible lending policy at banks like a cap at 80% LVT so that we do not make some of the same mistakes again. It really is time that household disposable income came to the fore as the fuel for lending rather than the hope of equity growth and release.

Or am I asking too much?

Money Well Spent

Well it was too much to hope for. After my last article, my faith in humanity was misplaced and City workers have once again covered themselves in honour by taunting G20 protesters with £10 notes.

There really is not much you can say. Quite what the waving of a £10 note is meant to say is unclear but that is about the sum of the matter. If that is the standard of intelligence and morals we have recruited in the Financial world then it is little wonder that we are in our current position.

It will be a monumental effort of restraint for anyone not to respond to such arrogance.

Far worse, innocent people like my wife, who works at the edge of the City, and people like her will be the ones likely to get hurt in any flare up of anger not the idiotic cowards who wave their money from the windows.

If enough shame has not been brought upon the banking industry already, then surely this must be the last straw. It has cost us all personally a great deal of money to save the careers of nobodies like that. If I had a choice I wouldn't give them the time of day, much less the money I earn.

I hope Obama, Brown and all the G20 team take a long hard look at what they are saving and preserving. It isn't worth it.

It doesn't make you proud to be British or have friends in the banking industry.

G20 - Hopes, Fears and Humble Pie?

When a similar Summit was held in London a few years ago, City trader-types thought it was funny to photocopy money and lob the copies out of their office windows along with bars of soap at the mass of protesters below. It caused an angry reaction which resulted in a good deal of property damage.

This time around, Banks have sent around internal memos urging restraint and recommending that employees should turn up to work today and tomorrow in casual clothes for fear that besuited people will be automatic targets of the wrath of the protesters on their way to the G20 Summit at ExCel in Docklands.

How strange it is that the very people upon whom the traders poured scorn and fake money the last time around are the very people who have pledged real money over the next 30 years in taxes in order to save their very careers.

A modicum of humble pie would not go amiss.

Our Hopes

After Gordon Brown's rather forlorn round the world trip on a mission to nothing, G20 kicks off for real tomorrow and Brown has reassured us all that there will be a broad consensus on the strategy and actions in order to lead us out of the financial chaos we are in. The likelihood of getting such a general agreement was dampened when the French threatened to walk out of the Summit before it had begun as they disagree fairly diametrically with the UK and US approach to the problems faced. It is good news that President Sarkozy is on his way now, hopefully with the lovely Carla in tow.

As much as we all may be angry with how this disastrous situation has come about and however much we may disagree with the enormity of some of the solutions, the one thing I am sure we would all hope for is a broad agreement on what to do about it.

Gordon Brown refers a lot to Protectionism and I think he needs to be clear about what he means here. On the one hand we are concerned in Britain that British jobs were taken at places like Lindsay Refinery and on programs like 'The Apprentice' there is a definite swing toward doing things to support British business; we also need free trade between borders in order to help get our economy ticking again. But that isn't necessarily what the PM means - he wants more flow of capital and credit into the British economy as literally hundreds of billions have been withdrawn from our money markets in recent months and lending has dropped sharply. It's lending to other banks, of course, but he wants to get that into the wider economy to fuel more accessible mortgages and resurrect the housing market. This is what fuelled our economy over the last 12 years and the PM wants to reset the clock to August 2007 to get it all back to normal.

I don't think that will be achievable. Every country has a duty to get its own house in order and some have suffered more at the hands of the global markets than others. President Obama wants a global response but he was clear in his bail out directives on capital projects - American construction, American steel, American labour. He would have been stupid to have said anything different.

What we would all like to see as well is some kind of global consensus on how banking should look for the future. It is more than clear that the system was not just broken but it was flawed from the beginning - it needs radical change and a re-focus on the core duties of banks which is to provide capital and credit. We would like to see more active, watchful and powerful regulatory authorities which have a global remit to not just monitor wrong doing but to look at business models, profiteering, bonuses and business ethics to ensure we do not have the sleepy old yes men of last time. It is a tragedy that our FSA is being remedied by the same executives who presided over the mess we are in - we need new people, fresh ideas and a commitment to facing banks down not pretty words.

No matter what Lord Turner and Hector Sants say, the FSA had all the remit to tackle banking previously - they just chose to ignore what was going on.

Transparency is a word I like. I would like to see a more transparent banking system that we can see and understand. That people invested in banks in Iceland is all very well but they should have a clear view of how these banks act and what risks there are. How we do that? I don't know but it is tragic that the 300,000 or so investors at Dunfermline Building Society had no idea their savings and investments were at risk through the suicidal business activities of the society's executives. Somehow we need to see that.

Transparency means Government and Public Service too. We have been disgusted locally over the state of public servants' ethics and it is time we got a clear view what our elected and unelected officials get up to, who pays them outside of us, how they spend our money, why they pick fights with other countries and how they account for failure.

The last year has brought into sharp focus the difference between responsibility and accountability at the top level - not one senior politician has accepted the accountability for the actions or inaction.

The culture of greed has almost destroyed us - it is even apparent in the music of the young. We have become a 'must-have' society and it has made us all spend far beyond our means. We have been invited to leverage our assets to produce more money which has fuelled a frenzy of profiteering and a bonus culture which has literally driven us to the point of ruin. It would be something if we could get the G20 countries to agree that the bonus culture at the top end is curbed which will lead to more sensible lending - it means a reduction in personal debt is a priority rather than enticing us to grab the money being pumped into our economies to increase our borrowing.

That has to be suicidal.

Our Fears

The worst that can happen is that the G20 countries walk away with only a statement which does not address any of the above but that they issue some carefully worded platitudes which really mean there was no agreement on anything. The next few months could be crucial for us all and we need these people to agree on at least one course of action in unison - perversely, even if it is the wrong one.

I fear that the G20 group will look upon the protesters and believe they are not representative of a wider opinion. We all deplore mindless violence and unpeacful protest - the whole protest is at risk of being hijacked by those looking for a fight. But this time round, there is a profound and fundamental opinion pervading in our society that believes that much of what we see today could have been avoided and that it was the very people who are assembling in London who slept on the job to ignore the signs. With due respect to new guys like Sarkozy and Obama, our fear is that we aim for a return to the status quo and not to radically change our system so that this cannot ever happen again. Without tackling this, we will be cursed with more booms, followed by ever increasing troughs.

If, in 3 or so years time, we are all remortgaging to leverage regrowth in our assets, then G20 will have failed. We must find a way to get back to sensible borrowing based on household income and avoid the lunatic lending of the last 12 years.

The problem with capitalism is that it is great when things are going well - we talk of honourable projects like reducing carbon, funding new projects to find fuels and materials that will conserve our resources and of helping others less fortunate than ourselves. The moment capitalism fails, it tries to patch itself up at any cost. There is a huge risk that all the good work to drive environmentally based projects and awareness will, at worst, dissipate and, at best, get set back years as we clamour to pump precious capital and money into a system that failed us so badly at the cost of all else.

The cries of the developing world have been drowned out by the siren calls of international rescue packages designed only for developed countries. At a recent African Nations Summit, the theme was that Africa did not cause this problem - it did not bring down the banks or financial system. Its problems have remained constant while we fly around our cliquey groups, mustering resources and taxpayers' money to rescue the few elite people many of who were personally richer than the combined wealth of millions of African people.

My biggest fear is that we consume far, far too much of our money saving a few rich people at the cost of a generation of Africans desperate for our help.

Humble Pie

I have talked of the banking community viewing the protesters very differently from before. This time round, real money in tax pledges have saved the necks of the arrogant people who threw the photocopies of cash out of their windows. Today and tomorrow, they will avoid eye contact and being recognised by the protesters for fear they may get a piece of their mind - and it would probably not stop at mere words.

My biggest hope is that we will have a banking system that breeds people with sense, compassion and real purpose instead of self-seeking, greedy, arrogant and repugnant people who in the face of losing billions still feel they are owed millions. I hope that the current crew not just eat some humble pie but that they remember in future that it is our money and our future with which they play. Accountability, going forward, should be the watchword and next time around let us all hope that the law helps us redress any excesses instead of mere moral indignance.

I hope, perhaps unrealistically, that the G20 Summit will be a platform from which the world will change for the better. I don't expect it overnight but some time in my lifetime is not too much to ask.