An article in last weekend’s New York Times described the problems of AXA Rosenberg; a quantitative funds manager owned by the French financial giant AXA. The role of quant funds is to use sophisticated share trading programs that maximise returns to large investors.
Sometime in mid 2009 an error was discovered in the software AXA Rosenberg used to trade on behalf of its clients. They didn’t tell their clients until April 2010, at least ten months later.
As a consequence, AXA Rosenberg are finding clients are fleeing them. This illustrates just how important trust is in business.
You don’t have to be a big corporation to fess up to mistakes; we all make them and the sooner we admit them the easier it is to rebuild or keep the trust of those around us.
Trust is the bedrock of business, as AXA Rosenberg has found without trust you have no business.
Hey Paul
Another good example of what I was driving at in my recent article on Trust.
http://franksting.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/trust/
I really don’t understand why businesses don’t understand that trying to hide things will only work out badly in the end. Customers are more likely to give you a break – and become your long term partners – if you fess up to issues early and work with them to make it right.
Gavin