The headlines just keep coming:

• Bristol-Myers Squibb executive accused of insider trading
• Olympic badminton teams disqualified after losing on purpose
• McKesson to pay $15 million to settle drug-pricing suit
• 100 Olympic athletes nabbed for doping
• Analyst pleads guilty to securities fraud
• Barclays fined more than $400 million for manipulating LIBOR
• J&J agrees to pay $2.2 billion to settle marketing violations
• GlaxoSmithKline agrees to pay $3.0 billion to resolve allegations of fraud
• Peregrine Financial Group files for bankruptcy in wake of $215 million fraud
• As statute of limitations approaches, Wall Street crimes of 2008 go unpunished

Let’s not ignore the non-business-related headline about the sentencing of a Philadelphia Roman Catholic priest to jail for covering up a sexual abuse scandal. As for Joe Paterno and the Penn State scandal . . . what else is left to say?

What’s Going on Here?
I’m not trying to assess the moral equivalence of these various and assorted infractions of published or unpublished rules, guidelines, or canons, and I don’t want to start a far-ranging conversation about the similarities and differences among them. But I do want to express my outrage at the flagrant violations of some standards of behavior by mature people who should have known better.

• Is there no shame in violating the rules in order to gain an advantage?
• Are the violators mentioned above comfortable with their infamy?

I know: the Bible tells us, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” And I’m not claiming to be totally without sin. But enough is enough!

It’s amusing and not totally unexpected when some young adult — including my grown son or daughter — chides me for being old-fashioned because I prefer a printed book to a Kindle, or when they opine on my “haircut from the 1950s.” Like many (most?) people of a certain age, I have a fondness for business practices I learned several decades ago, i.e. reading a daily newspaper, carrying a soft-sided briefcase instead of a backpack, and not totally trusting the accuracy of databases when analyzing companies’ financial statements.

But I draw the line at violating the ethical principles I learned from college professors and advisors, my first industry mentors, subsequent supervisors with unblemished personal and business reputations, and dozens of ethical men and women I have been pleased and proud to call colleagues.

Again, I don’t claim to be a saint. However, I have worked in the highly regulated securities industry for my entire life and, as a part of my job, I have routinely come into the possession of material, non-public information about publicly held firms. I know I’m not alone in asserting a stock trading history that would reveal absolutely no incident of inappropriate trading behavior. Moreover, based on my internal moral compass and my external public mores, I have never found it difficult to resist the temptation to violate the rules for some personal or financial gain. I have indeed worked with a few people who have committed some type of financial fraud or deceit. But I have found it easy to resist the temptation to “lie down with the dogs,” lest I get their fleas.

Let me exercise the columnist’s prerogative to preach – just a little:

• Don’t  become enmeshed in schemes to squeeze out the last bit of profit from every one of your endeavors.
• Don’t tolerate colleagues who violate the ethical rules that really don’t need to be written down.
• Don’t give younger people a reason to think that the phrase “they’re all alike – and they’re all crooked” applies to you.
• And most of all: Don’t lose your outrage; someone has to have it!

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Michael A. Martorelli is a Director at the investment banking firm Fairmount Partners. For additional commentary on the topics covered in this column contact him at [email protected]  or at Tel: (610) 260-6232; Fax (610) 260-6285.