John Deutch Quotes

Transparency is so important in business.

I have always felt that public, commercial and community organisations should be as open as possible about their affairs. They need to be accountable to their owners, their customers, their members and communities and other interest groups.

We have to raise the bar on corporate governance. Shareholders want ethical behavior and honesty.

You're used to seeing values listed on waiting-room walls. Communication, integrity, excellence, and respect. Those were actually Enron's values.

I think most corporate executives are good honorable honest men and women who do good work.

Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.

In the past ABC has made half-hearted efforts or, worse, cosmetic efforts, to do something about news and I wasn't certain about what their real aim was - nor am I now.

Businesspeople get a little bit of bad press sometimes. There are a lot of normal and ethical people.

History has shown that one cannot legislate a culture of integrity. And yet, one of the paramount responsibilities and challenges of corporate leadership is to ensure such a culture.

And obviously, with hindsight now, now knowing what went on in the company, it would have been absolutely appropriate back then for us to have the chief executive of the company, most senior person in the United Kingdom, come and answer for the policy they were pursuing. And we ducked that, and frankly that's a failure of Parliament.

Accountability begins with transparency.

The time is coming when all businesses will have to be done with glass pockets.

Government will have to learn what private businesses are beginning to realize that in this increasingly transparent world, the successful organizations will be those that are able to operate with very few secrets…. The cost of maintaining secrecy is getting higher and higher even when it can be done at all.

Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix.

Governments and local administrative bodies decide to inform the public of their mistakes only when losses have become disproportionately great.

The future will find one of its great problems is deciding how big a business enterprise must become before the public is entitled to know the full details of its management.

We follow highest level of corporate governance, which is in line with a global company like ours.

I don't think it's wrong for companies to work with the government. What's important is being trustworthy and honest with customers.

I believe good corporate governance is critical in enhancing competitiveness and creating industry - leading profitable growth and superior returns for every stakeholder of the institution.

They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.

When you're building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can't have two sets of information for two sets of people.

I believe that if corporate America expects consumer confidence to be restored, they must first be honest with us.

Doing good business - being ethical, being transparent, being caring, implementing values in your business - makes a difference, and you make money at the same time.

One thing I have always promised is to be open and transparent and to treat employees and partners with respect and integrity.

In America, we no longer have an institutionalized, organized way of calling business to task - of taking them to account for what they've done - and this is especially true in the cultural realm.