ETHICS IN FINANCE

Meaning of Ethics

Ethics is the study of human behavior which is right or wrong. In general, ethics means doing right things to others, being honest to others, being fair and justice to others. Even ethics in finance is a compartment to general ethics. Ethics are very important to maintain constancy in social life, where people work together with one another. In the process of social development we should not be conscious of ourselves but also conscious to take care of others.

WHAT IS FINANCE Finance means fund or other financial resources; it deals with matter related to money and the market. The field of finance refers to the concept of time, money and risk and how they are interrelated. Banks are the main facilitators of funding. Funding means asset in the form of money Finance is the set of activities that deals with the management of funds. It helps in making the decision like how to use the collected fund. It is also art and science of determining if the funds of an organization are being used in a right manner or not. Through financial analysis, any company or business can take decision in making financial investments, acquisition of company, selling of company, to know the financial standing of their business in present, past and future. It helps to stay competitive with others in making strategic financial decisions. Finance is the backbone of business; no business can run without finance.

WHAT IS ETHICS IN FINANCE

Ethics in finance is one of the main things which everyone has to follow from the small, medium and big level company because almost all the country depend up on the financial background of the country because without financial component no business can run for a long time. The assumption of modern financial-economic theory runs counter to the ideas of honesty, devotion, dependability and loyalty. Ethics in finance may vary from different industries to different industries but everyone is liable to-do their work at utmost good faith. Peoples who involved in finance activity have to serve both their company and their customers at utmost good faith.

Code of Ethics in Finance 1. Act with honesty and integrity, avoiding real or clear conflicts of interest in personal and professional relationships. 2. To provide information which is full, fair, accurate, complete, objective, relevant, timely and understandable, including in and for reports and documents that the Company files with, or submits to, the other public communications made by the Company. 3. Act in accordance with all applicable laws, rules and regulations of governments, and other appropriate private and public regulatory agencies. 4. Act in good faith, responsibly, with due care, competence and carefulness, without misrepresenting material factor allowing my independent judgment to be subordinated. 5. Respect the confidentiality of information acquired in the course of business except when authorized or otherwise legally obligated to disclose the information. It should not be used for personal advantage. 6. To promote ethical behavior among our associates. 7. Adhere to and promote this Code of Ethics

Ethical issues in Finance * Fraud in Financial Statements

* Fictitious Revenues * Concealed Liabilities and Expenses * Fraudulent Asset Valuations * Improper or Fraudulent Disclosures or Omissions. Example: Satyam Computer Services Scandal
The Satyam Computer Services scandal was a corporate scandal that occurred in India in 2009 where Chairman Ramalinga Raju confessed that the company's accounts had been falsified. CID told in court that the actual number of employees is only 40,000 and not 53,000 as reported earlier and that Mr. Raju had been withdrawing 20 crore (US$4 million) every month for paying these13,000 non-existent employees.
Duties of an Auditor * To give an accurate statement to the members about the state of affairs of a company * To meet the objectives of the Companies Act1956 and also the Articles of Association. * To be reasonably skilful and careful in identifying the true nature of the accounts.

* Ethical Issues in Financial Markets

* Deception: An act of misrepresenting relevant information * Churning: Excessive or inappropriate trading for client account by a broker who has control over the account with intent to generate commissions rather than to benefit client. * Unsuitability * Unfairness in Markets
Example: HARSHAD MEHTA SCAM
Harshad Shantilal Mehta the rise in the Bombay Stock Exchange in the year 1992. Exploiting several loopholes in the banking system, Mehta and his associates siphoned off funds from inter-bank transactions and bought shares heavily at a premium across many segments, triggering a rise in the BSE Sensex. When the scam was exposed, the banks started demanding the money back, causing the collapse. He was later charged with 72 criminal offenses and more than 600 civil action suits were filed against him. He died in 2002 at the age of 47 with many litigations still pending against him. * Insider Trading
Insider trading essentially denotes dealing in a company’s securities on the basis of confidential information relating to the company which is not published or not known to the public used to make profit or loss. It is fairly a breach of fiduciary duties of officers of a company or “connected” persons as defined under the SEBI regulations, 1992, towards the shareholders.
Insider term actually includes both legal and illegal conduct. The legal version is when corporate insider officer, directors, and employees buy and sell stock in their own companies, when corporate insiders trade in their own securities , they must report their trades to SEBI.
Illegal insider trading refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, while in possession of material, non-public information about the security.
Who are insider traders? * Corporate officers, directors, and employees who traded the corporate securities after learning of significant, confidential corporate developments. * Friends, business associates, family members, and other types of such officers, directors, and employees, who traded the securities after receiving such information. * Employees of law, banking, brokerage and printing firms who were given such information to provide services to the corporation whose securities they traded. * Government employees who learned of such information because of their employment under the Government sector. * Other persons who misappropriated, and took advantage of, confidential information from their employers. Example: Rajat Gupta Scam
Rajat Gupta, one of the most successful Indian Americans on Wall Street, was found guilty of passing confidential market information to Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam in one of America's biggest insider trading cases.
Mr Gupta's fall from grace began in April 2010, as part of the investigation into Raj Rajaratnam, a Sri Lankan hedge fund manager accused of insider trading. The government accused Mr Gupta of tipping off Mr Rajaratnam of Warren Buffet's decision to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs. Mr Gupta allegedly learned this information on September 23 in 2008 at a board meeting. His tip allegedly allowed Mr Rajaratnam to buy the stock before the news was made public the next day. Mr Rajaratnam made a profit of $800,000 in just 24 hours. * Hostile Takeovers
A hostile takeover is an acquisition in which the company being purchased doesn’t want to be purchased, or doesn’t want to be purchased by the particular buyer that is making a bid. How can someone buy something that’s not for sale? Hostile takeovers only work with publicly traded companies. That is, they have issued stock that can be bought and sold on public stock markets.
Examples of Hostile Takeovers: Microsoft V/S Yahoo (Microsoft attempts for Hostile takeover of Yahoo, but the deal didn’t work-out. * Anti-takeover defense measures

* Poison Pills
A strategy used by corporations to discourage hostile takeovers. With a poison pill, the target company attempts to make its stock less attractive to the acquirer. There are two types of poison pills:
1. A "flip-in" allows existing shareholders (except the acquirer)to buy more shares at a discount.
2. A "flip-over" allows stockholders to buy the acquirer's shares at a discounted price after the merger. Example: Netflix the video-streaming and DVD rental company adopted a shareholder rights plan commonly known as a poison pill, to fend off the activist investor Carl C. Icahn to keep things exciting and place a shareholder-friendly spin on the event.

* Green mail
Like blackmail, greenmail is money that is paid to an entity to make it stop an aggressive behaviour. In mergers and acquisitions, it is an antitakeover measure where the target company pays a premium, known as greenmail, to purchase its own stock shares back (at inflated prices) from a corporate raider. Once the raider accepts the greenmail payment, generally it agrees to stop pursuing the takeover and not to purchase any more shares for a specified number of years. The term "greenmail" stems from a combination of blackmail and greenbacks (dollars).The great number of corporate mergers that occurred during the 1980s led to a wave of greenmailing. During that time, it was suspected that some corporate raiders initiated takeover bids to make money through greenmail, which no intention of following through on the takeover.
Example: The St. Regis Paper Company provides an example of greenmail. When an investor group led by Sir James Goldsmith acquired 8.6% stake in St. Regis and expressed interest in taking over the paper concern, the company agreed to repurchase the shares at a premium. Goldsmith's group acquired the shares for an average price of $35.50 per share, a total of $109 million. It sold its stake at $52 per share, netting a profit of $51million. * Buy back
A buyback allows companies to invest in themselves. By reducing the number of shares outstanding on the market, buybacks increase the proportion of shares a company owns. Buybacks can be carried out in two ways:
1. Shareholders may be presented with a tender offer whereby they have the option to submit (or tender) a portion or all of their shares within a certain timeframe and at a premium to the current market price. This premium compensates investors for tendering their shares rather than holding on to them.
2. Companies buy back shares on the open market over an extended period of time. * People Pill
A defensive strategy to ward off a hostile takeover. The target company's management team threatens that, in the event of a takeover, the entire team will resign. The purpose of a people pill is to discourage the acquiring company from completing the takeover, by introducing the possibility of having to put together an entirely new management team. This strategy is only effective if the acquiring company wants to keep the existing management. The first use of the people pill anti-takeover strategy is attributed to a food company called the Borden Corporation. In 1989, the company's board of directors approved a people pill that Borden could use to demand that an acquiring company pay a fair value for the company's shares and that it not fire or demote any of Borden's existing managers. The people pill strategy is a variation of the poison pill defense. Other takeover defenses include staggered boards, golden parachutes and shareholder rights plans.
Conclusion
No business and company can run without finance. It is lifeblood for all the organization. So if almost all the field in finance follows ethics in their duty almost all other process will function very well without any discrepancies.