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Integrity: Soundness of Moral Character

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Integrity: Soundness of Moral Character
Integrity,(Unknown)“Adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.” The question could be asked that in the modern world of business, is integrity a requirement for a manager in global corporations? In writing this short assignment, I will take the stance that integrity is an essential part of managing in present day global corporation. In doing so, I will focus on the famous Bre-X gold scandal that occurred which is an ideal example of a situation where the integrity of the managers company left a negative impact on a global scale. First of all, I will provide some insight on the scandal and I will end by how the integrity of the manager of the company lead to a scam.

According to Cathrine Henchek, Bre-X was (Henchek) “a professionally managed Canadian company, an "Indonesian shadow company operated by Felderhof and his technical team," and "the promotional and marketing machine operated by David Walsh from Calgary or his beachfront house in Nassau." Basically, the company was manged and owned by Canadian David Walsh and the gold mining land that was involved was situated in Indonesia. This was tested for gold and rendered very positive results. The way this result was obtained was by tainting the land in question with gold shavings or small amounts of gold to yield positive results. Then this tainted result was leaked so that potential investors bought the stock for the company and the price of the stock increased. Additionally, land ownership disputes were also promoted to further deceit potential investors that the land must be worth something that people are disputing over it. Finally, before the fraud was exposed, David Walsh and Felderhof sold their investments in the company and made millions of dollars. It after the scam was exposed that the stock plummeted and people lost millions of dollars. According to Daniel Lawrence, (Lawrence), “About C$3bn in investors ' money was lost in the scandal.” Many people were



Cited: Daina Lawrence, in Ottawa. "Acquittal of Geologist Ends Bre-X Case." FT.com (2007): 1. ProQuest. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Henchek, Catherine F. "Bre-X: The Lure of False Gold." Engineering and Mining Journal 199.6 (1998): 42. ProQuest. Web. 26 Jan. 2014. Unknown. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. Unknown, 25 January 2014.

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