hard - won gains by our forebears. our nation needs its capable young countrymen to take it forward and to continue to develop it into a progressive, prosperous and harmonious society for future generations. once you step outside the portals of the university, what is awaiting you? outside is the real world – very different from the academe world. you will certainly be looking for a job, a job that you feel is appropriate for the kinds of competence and skills that you have acquired during those years of study. are you well - prepared to face the jungle that the workplace can sometimes be, a jungle where competition is raging? would you want to join the fight for a handful of positions at the top regardless of the means to reach there? or would you rather choose to earn your credibility the hard way? gone are the days when you can retire on the same job. in a work environment that becomes increasingly demanding, you will face tremendous challenges. today ’ s jobs require multi - skilling, multi - tasking and lifelong learning. newton d. baker1 once said : “ the man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after. ” how very true in today ’ s world? the world is now a very uncertain place. changes are happening every minute – the very foundations on which the global economic and financial system rest are being shaken. at the same time, the world demands more transparency, more accountability and good governance. some view this with misapprehension and fear. but for others, what an exciting time it is! i am of those who believe that something great will come out of all the turmoil that the world is presently going through. i am reminded of a passage in orson wells ’ the third man, which refers to the reign of the borgias2 in italy. i quote the passage, with all due respect to the swiss people : “ in italy for thirty years under the borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced michelangelo, leonardo da vinci and the renaissance. in switzerland, they had brotherly love ; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? the cuckoo clock! ” the analogy stops short, of course, of the warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed. the point i wish to make here is that even when things seem at their worst, great things can happen. as they say, you can only see the stars when it is dark.

r basant roi : indian ocean international bank ltd - opening of the on - going training programme keynote address by mr r basant roi, governor of the bank of mauritius, port louis, 8 march 2003. * * * chairman of the board of directors of the ioib staff members of the ioib ladies and gentlemen i am privileged to address you on the occasion of the opening of the first training programme for the staff of the indian ocean international bank ltd. your training programme is starting at a time when animated talks regarding the latest bank fraud have wrought up to a high pitch of concern. although i have been invited by your bank today to reflect on ethics in banking to mark the opening of your training programme, i shall attempt to highlight some cases of fraud from which we may all draw some lessons. philosophers in ancient as well as modern times have debated lengthily on ethics. aristotle and j. s. mill could not definitively sort out our ethical problems. it is unlikely that the business gurus of today can resolve the problems with a few well - constructed and captivating sentences. a commentator from the european media once stated that he found himself ill at ease to start a television programme ‘ with a lecture by currency manipulator george soros, of all people, on ethics ’. the commentator was quick in qualifying his remark with a statement to the effect that george soros had spent quite some millions of dollars made in speculating against the pound sterling in 1992 on charities. unethical ethics? ethical dilemma or what? i do not intend to dwell lengthily on such an overarching concept as ethics. we all have our own definition of ethics. the oxford english dictionary defines ethics as a set of moral principles. ethic is a singular word but is often used in plural. perhaps that is why its definition tends to be so elastic. it is, as you all must be knowing, not a mathematical concept and i, for one, would not venture here to give you any precise definition of what ethics in banking is all about. let me content myself with ethics in its simplest sense, that is, as one writer has put it, “ choosing the good over the bad, the right over the wrong, the fair over the unfair ”. and what is good, phaedrus, and what is not good need we ask anyone to tell us these things? ethical behaviour stems from within us, not from without. “ nothing external, … no guideline, no regulation