The 12 Discarded Myths Of Our Times
- By Professor Prabhu Guptara
- Published 06/23/2009
Professor Prabhu Guptara
Professor Prabhu Guptara is Executive Director, Organisational Development, Wolfsberg (a subsidiary of UBS - one of the largest banks in the world). He is also Freeman of the City of London and of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and Chartered Fellow of the of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development; he is also Fellow: of the Institute of Directors, of the Royal Commonwealth Society, and of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts Commerce and Manufactures; and he continues to supervise PhD research at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as well as to be Visiting Professor at various Universities and Business Schools around the world.
Earlier roles include: a Governor of the Polytechnic of Central London, Member of the Council of the British Institute of Management, of the International Federation of Training & Development Organisations (IFTDO), of the Association for Management Education and Development (UK), of the South East Regional Council of the Confederation of British Industry.
Judge, 1988 National Training Awards, 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1990 & 1991 Deo Gloria Prize for Fiction; Chair of the Panel of Judges, Deo Gloria Prize 1992 & 1993.
Experience with an enormous range of organisations including: Akzo Nobel (Netherlands), the Associated Banks Institute (Germany), Barclays Bank (UK), British Petroleum (UK), the Council of Europe, Cultor (Finland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Groupe Bull (France), Federation of Finnish Engineers (Finland), the International Management Association of Japan, Kemira (Finland), Kraft Jakob Suchard (Switzerland), Leadership Academy (Finland), Nokia Telecommunications (Finland), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Sedgwick International Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers (UK), Singapore Institute of Management, Sonatrach (Algeria), Sun Alliance (UK), UNCTAD, Valeo (France), and so on.
Organiser, chair and lecturer by invitation for numerous international conferences, he has contributed widely to radio and television in the UK and other countries (The Money Program, Any Questions) and has written for Financial Times (London, UK), The Guardian, The Times and other publications; articles, for example, in The Gower Handbook of Management, The Gower Handbook of Quality, and the International Encyclopedia of Business & Management (Routledge).
A CD-ROM has been issued of his lecture at the Professorenforum, University of Zurich, titled "Making the World Better - Why it does NOT happen...and what TO DO about it"
Further information available from rbadertscher@coba.ch
His best-known research publication is "Top Executives in the Global 100 Companies and their IT-Competence" (ADVANCE: Management Training Ltd., UK, and Wolfsberg Executive Development Centre, Switzerland, 1998); and he is included in Debrett's People of Today and in Who's Who in the World. Professor Prabhu Guptara lives in Switzerland.
2. Leveraged betting and other financial innovations are uniformly good and create no systemic disadvantages or vulnerabilities
3. Most countries can continue to manipulate their currencies; the consequence may be minor advantages/ disadvantages relative to other countries, but there are no systemic consequences
4. Sub-prime housing is a marginal issue and, in any case, losses will be limited
5. In any case, interest rate cuts will certainly deal with any possible resulting system-wide issues
6. Central banks are on top of inflation and there is no foreseeable reason to imagine that they will not be able to continue doing so
7. Growing stability in emerging markets will make the IMF more and more marginal, or even redundant
8. Even if there is a problem in emerging markets at any time, these are tiny and the global system can cope without any problem
9. The less regulatory supervision there is, the better - we don't even need to register deals worth billions
10. There is no reason for the public, governments or any other authorities to interfere with the structure, process and results regarding incentives by companies
11. Company-level risk-management is all that we need; if we look after this level, then global or systemic risk will look after itself.
12. Large bubbles (e.g. in commodities, oil or housing) or large borrowing flows (current account deficits, term mismatches) are not indicators of systemic risk – and, in any case, we can’t do anything about them.
Prabhu Guptara
