Cum-ex Psychopaths

The financial services industry is reputed to be over-represented with psychopaths. In my book I talk about the recent Australia Banking Royal Commission as one example of how the industry seems to attract them en masse. It’s hard to read this story about “cum-ex” fraud without thinking a lot of the people tied up in it, including the lawyers, might be psychopaths.

One of the German lawyers involved in stealing tens of billions of dollars from public treasuries reputedly said:

“Whoever has a problem with the fact that because of our work there are fewer kindergartens being built,” Dr. Berger reportedly said, “here’s the door.”

This is why I argue that the number one thing we can do to stop psychopaths from destroying the world is to implement psychopath tests of all managers across all kinds of organisations.