##ulating these principles is to provide market participants with the framework in which to think about how they handle stop - loss orders. the emphasis here is very much on the word “ think ”. the global code will not provide the answers to all your questions, but it should help you ask the right questions. in a similar vein, i will repeat a point that i have made a number of times in the past. one of our most central aims in drafting the code is for it to be principles - based rather than rulesbased. there are a number of reasons why this is so, but for me, an important reason is that the more prescriptive the code is, the easier it is to get around. rules are easier to arbitrage than principles. if it ’ s not expressly prohibited or explicitly discouraged, then it must be okay seems to be the historical experience. moreover, the more prescriptive and the more precise the code is, the less people will think about what they are doing. if it ’ s principles - based and less prescriptive then, as i just said, market participants will have to think about whether their actions are consistent with the principles of the code. adherence to the code alongside drafting the code, we have also been devoting considerable time and effort to thinking about how to ensure widespread adoption of the global code by market participants. clearly, that has been an issue with the various existing codes that have been in place in a number of markets over many years. it is evident that they were ignored on occasion, wilfully or otherwise. as i said earlier, we are working with the industry to produce a principles - based code of conduct rather than a set of prescriptive regulatory standards. it will not impose legal or regulatory obligations on market participants, nor will it supplant existing regulatory standards or expectations. but we do expect the principles in the code to be understood and adopted across the entire fx market. we laid out our overall approach to adherence to the code in new york last month 6 and we intend to work closely with market participants in the coming year to facilitate the development of market - based mechanisms which demonstrably embed the global code within firms ’ culture and practices. these mechanisms need to be sensitive to existing law and regulation and to the diverse nature of fx markets globally. hence a ‘ one size fits all ’ approach to adherence would not be appropriate. we need to strike the right balance between respecting the existing diversity across different markets

but a recent survey of cfos by deloitte hints at the for example, see sharpe s and gustavo suarez ( 2013 ), “ do cfos think investment is sensitive to interest rates? ”, feds notes, 26 september. available at < http : / / www. federalreserve. gov / econresdata / notes / fedsnotes / 2013 / do - cfos - think - investment - is - sensitive - to - interest - rates - 20130926. html >. bis central bankers ’ speeches same conclusion. the survey results suggest that hurdle rates of return on new investment are typically above 10 per cent and sometimes considerably so ( graph 11 ). the results also suggest that the average margin between the hurdle rate of return and the weighted - average cost of capital is about 3 percentage points. as part of the survey, firms were also asked how often they changed the hurdle rate, with the most frequent answer being “ very rarely ”. these findings are very similar to those reached through the bank ’ s own extensive business liaison program. one issue that this raises is what is the appropriate hurdle rate of return in a world of persistently low interest rates? each cfo will no doubt have a different answer to this, but in a world of persistently low interest rates, it may well turn out that the average answer is – or should be – lower than it used to be. recently, in a number of countries there has been a tendency for firms to return funds to shareholders. these firms are effectively saying to their shareholders, “ here, you manage the money, as we do not have investment opportunities that satisfy our internal rate of return. ” in many cases, shareholders have welcomed this, seeing it as a disciplined approach to capital management. the difficulty is that if the majority of firms act in this way, shareholders in aggregate get left holding the cash. and, on that cash, they earn very low rates of return – almost certainly lower than the rate of return that would, on average, be earned if that cash were invested by businesses in real assets. this is really just another way of saying that if the appetite for investment is low, savers, in the end, will get low returns on their savings. so, as i said, this world of low interest rates is creating many challenges for you as cfos – whether you are a cfo needing to fund future liabilities, a cfo valuing and managing assets or a cf