Ethics in Finance

John R. Boatright is the Raymond C. Baumhart, S.J., Professor of Business Ethics in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola Universi­ty Chicago, and Director of the Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility. He is the author of the book Ethics and the Conduct of Business (2012) and the editor of Finance Ethics: Critical Issues in Theory and Practice (Wiley, 2010). He is a past President of the Society for Business Ethics, and he serves on the editorial boards of Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, and Business and Society Review. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago.

Preface vii

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations x

1 Finance Ethics: An Overview 1

The Need for Ethics in Finance 2

The Field of Finance Ethics 13

2 Fundamentals of Finance Ethics 26

A Framework for Ethics 27

Agents, Fiduciaries, and Professionals 40

Conflict of Interest 45

3 Ethics and the Retail Customer 63

Sales Practices 64

Credit Cards 78

Mortgage Lending 96

Arbitration 108

4 Ethics in Investment 120

Mutual Funds 121

Relationship Investing 141

Socially Responsible Investing 148

Microfinance 155

5 Ethics in Financial Markets 171

Fairness in Markets 172

Insider Trading 182

Hostile Takeovers 189

Financial Engineering 201

6 Ethics in Financial Management 223

The Corporate Objective 224

Risk Management 234

Ethics of Bankruptcy 243

Corporate Governance 254

Index 273