Building Better Wall Street Leaders

The first responsibility of financial sector leaders is not to improve the long-term health of the economy, it is to create value for the owners of their companies. In doing so, they will make a series of decisions that are good for the economy as a whole.

The most obvious way to fail to create value is to go out of business, wiping out your shareholders' capital, as happened to several large financial institutions. Others came perilously close to this fate; in some cases, accepting highly dilutive capital infusions to survive.

So what lessons should industry leaders take from these events as they develop future leaders?

See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/19/AR2009091900073.html