Bubbles, busts and the great global recession. How can the financial sector be transformed from a casino-like enterprise driven by gaming risk to a sustainable enterprise for fostering socially purposeful corporations?

On June 9-10, in historic Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market in Boston, leaders from business, civil society, finance, labor and law will convene to debate the critical questions of the purpose, restructuring and regulation of the financial industry. The event is hosted by Corporation 20/20, which celebrates its fifth anniversary of visioning, design and advocacy of corporate forms that seamlessly blend social and financial mission.

"Five years after the launch of Corporation 20/20, the world of business and finance faces a crossroads of historic proportions," notes Allen L. White, Corporation 20/20 Co-Founder and Director and Co-Founder and former CEO of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). "The super-sizing of the financial industry based on extreme leveraging, exotic derivatives and inadequate regulation has been a pivotal factor in creating the global economic recession. It is time to challenge sacred cows and conventional wisdoms regarding the purpose and structure of finance, and to redirect its intelligence and innovation to securing an affordable, timely and patient flow of capital to socially purposeful companies."

The event will be keynoted by Robert Johnson, a member of United Nations Commission of Experts on Reforming the International Monetary and Financial System, former chief economist of the Senate Banking and Budget Committees, and former Managing Director of Soros Fund Management. Johnson will be joined by a host of other featured speakers, including: Robert Kuttner, author and Co-founder/Co-Editor of the American Prospect; Peter Blom, Chair and CEO of Triodos Bank (Netherlands); Roger Saillant, former Vice President of Ford Motor Company and former CEO of Plug Power; Damon Silvers, Associate General of the AFL-CIO and member, Congressional Oversight Committee on TARP; and Peter Senge, Society for Organizational Learning and MIT Sloan School of Management.

The Summit will release a Paper Series on "Restoring the Primacy of the Real Economy," a selection of topics such as new models of economic regulation, why Modern Portfolio Theory exacerbates systemic risk, and how various asset classes support or impair stewardship investing.

"This is the moment in time when the opportunity and urgency of fundamental change in the financial sector equals that of the New Deal era," says White. "The Summit is committed to raising a progressive voice in influencing the rapidly unfolding global and domestic agenda that is driving policy decisions in reforming the financial sector."

Information on the agenda, speakers and registration for the Summit is available at: www.summit2020.org.

Corporation 20/20

Corporation 20/20

Corporation 20/20 seeks to: create a forum of leading thinkers, practitioners and advocates; construct positive and plausible visions of the future corporate form, and translate such visions into broad-based advocacy. Toward those ends, the initiative aims to create international benchmarks to inspire and guide corporations, governments, multilateral organizations and civil society toward transformative change in corporate design, including ownership structures, governance, corporate law reform, capitalization and internal incentives and rewards. Corporation 20/20 is rooted in the premise that societal expectations of business in the 21st century demands a major elevation in corporate contributions to urgent global problems—economic, environmental, and social.

More from Corporation 20/20