What we’re reading now – October

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An excerpt from AretéWork Quarterly – sign up here to receive the next issue.

Behaviour and Culture in the Irish Retail Banks issued by the Central Bank of Ireland and written in collaboration with the DNB (De Nederlandsche Bank). The report focuses on culture at the senior levels of the 5 largest Irish banks, particularly in regard to consumer focus and shares crucial insights and clear recommendations on how culture influences behaviour, sometimes with disastrous results.

ICARUS Ascesa e Caduta di Raul Gardini (Icarus, the rise and fall of Raul Gardini) by Matteo Cavezzali. I lived in Italy when the Montedison/Enimont/Ferruzzi events were taking place, although I had left before Raul Gardini, who was for a while one of the most powerful businessmen in Italy, “killed himself”. He died during the massive bribery scandal called Tangentopoli that swept through the Italian business and political landscape. People may have heard of Antonio di Pietro, the judge whose investigations resulted in Tangentopoli, and in many business people spending time in San Vittore prison in Milan. The book looks at Gardini’s death and the events that surrounded it from the perspective of a Ravennese (inhabitant of Ravenna, where the Ferruzzi family was based). It is unusual in that it alternates fact with imagined fiction in trying to determine whether he committed suicide or was murdered, and if so by whom. In Italian.

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