Greg Medcraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs at OECD interview with Matt Bird at Humanity 2.0 (Vatican City)
HIGHLIGHTS
- Trust in society in one of the biggest challenges being faced
- OECD’s main focus is ethics in business
- OECD provides standard for companies to follow to detect and prevent corruption
FULL COVERAGE
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS: Greg Medcraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs at OECD with Matt Bird
Matt Bird – Show Host, Traders Network Show: 00:00
Welcome back to the Traders Network Show and our coverage of the 2019 Humanity’s 2.0. I’m Matt Bird broadcasting a worldwide for the Vatican for Equities.com and our network syndicated partners. My next guest needs very little introduction on the global stage. He is the director of finance and enterprise affairs for the OECD. We’ve got Greg Medcraft. Greg, welcome to the show. I’ve been trying to hunt you down now for two years, two Davos appearances and I just missed you in Australia. I just couldn’t, I didn’t have it in me that trip after coming off of something in from Europe and I was like, pleased to see you on the roster. And I was like, I just got an the only great place to be here and So, you know, we’ll start off. We’re here at Humanity 2.0 you’ve consumed a little bit of the content going on in the side. We’ve got a lot of thought leaders, a lot of influencers. Can you give us a little bit of a takeaway for you?
Greg MedCraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs, OECD: 00:46
I think it’s a great initiative, because if you think about one of the biggest problems today is really an issue of trust in society. And I think the idea behind Humanity 2.0 is actually helping to rebuild some of that trust. If you think about the initiative in terms of the school of business and ethics, it’s been proposed. I think that’s great because that is again a need key element of how we build trusting business. But even the uh, what they are looking at doing in terms of maternal health care is concretely helping rebuild trust in the community and how one part of the community can help the other cause you know, a part of trust is there a lot of people rising inequality is a massive issue today and how one I can reach out to the other to help bridge that I think is important. Now these are two things, you know, there’s so much to do, but these are really important steps and I think it’s great in terms of, it is about, you may need 2.0 we’ve got to think more about one another.
Matt Bird – Show Host, Traders Network Show: 01:45
How can companies help move like you talking about like health care and you know, and birthing and those sorts of things. But what can private companies do? You’re on the public side and you do have a lot of public private partnerships, a lot of enterprise integration on multiple levels. You’ve got your finger on the pulse of what’s working, what’s not working, you know, what works, what doesn’t work. You can see it a mile away when you’ve got, if you’re an organization and let’s just say we got Google here, we’ve got burst IQ, we’ve got a number, different groups. What could these private companies do? Cisco, what could they do to actually move the needle for something like this?
Greg MedCraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs, OECD: 02:27
You know what, they can be champions. No, they can be champions of basically thinking about the social license and what the community is really expecting in business. And they can lead by example within their own companies equally. They can actually be out there, you know, having a dialogue with other companies, the to look for like-minded companies to share their experience. So, you know, this is not, you know, basically I’m more about evolution than revolution and part of evolution is actually doing, starting the first thing is to start at home and do the right thing. Right. And then to try and have a dialogue to expand like we’re doing here like-minded parties. And that’s a bit like with what happens with OECD, it’s about like-minded governments around the world. You know, what we want is better policies for better lives and I’ll emphasize, it’s about better lives. And that applies whether you’re a company or your government, it’s actually him the day it’s actually about better lives. When you think about it, it’s actually what Humanity 2.0 is actually trying to do as well.
Matt Bird – Show Host, Traders Network Show: 03:20
It’s people helping humanity. That’s it. Well listen, I think you’ve got a panel coming up ready next. Right? And I can see people looking over here making sure you’re okay.
Greg MedCraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs, OECD: 03:47
But I will say from our point of view at OECD you know our contribution from my director down that is around conduct and responsible business conduct, whether it be in supply chains, whether it be dealing with things like anti-corruption because corruption is a shocking thing around the world. It actually affects humanity. Communities, they pay too much or they don’t get access. And it’s also about making sure that you have, again, good corporate governance. So this just sort of angle we’re looking at today.
Matt Bird – Show Host, Traders Network Show: 04:08
Speaking of corruption, and I don’t want to go down that path, but you know as, as public private partnerships and it’s an area that I’m pretty familiar with becoming more commonplace. What are organizations what do public directors, the directors of public entities need to be looking at to be able to not cross that boundary. And it’s a very slippery slope because the intent is good, but sometimes there is that gray area. How do you maintain that balancing act of, there’s a way to operate about to the way companies, you, you, you get what you want. So long as we get what we want and everybody benefits. But is that that delicate balance.
Greg MedCraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs, OECD: 05:00
First of all, it is about culture and having the right culture and accompany that festival. We don’t, we don’t pay bribes. Okay. But then it’s a matter of making sure that you have procedures and policies in place to make sure that that vision is actually flows through the whole company and that you have the right culture. But equally you have methods of detecting potential briberies occurred, your company, you know, and what we do at OECD in say in the corruption area, we have standards that companies can follow in their supply chains in terms of dealing with detecting corruption. And we have our overall corporate governance principles that deal with dealing with corruption. So there are tools available to companies in terms of due diligence and overall corporate governance policies that actually to help you do the right thing.
Matt Bird – Show Host, Traders Network Show: 05:57
And we can go on and we get to swap out. We have some logistical stuff going on, but this is a really neat opportunity for companies out there that are, have thought about engaging in a public private partnership level who have resources that want to apply. But they also, the partnership means that there’s a, there’s a two-way collaboration, right? So should a company, how should the formation of stuff go from your standpoint of what is expected from both sides? Should a company lay out with what their expectations are.
Greg MedCraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs, OECD: 06:12
I think actually two sides. One, clearly companies need to have their own standards in terms of corruption, but equally if they are dealing with government, public sector, public product, publish, proper private. So we advise governments in terms of corporate governance standards from a public perspective. So for state owned entities, what are the standards, you know, independence of boards. So we’ve established standards that actually had, and we advised governments around the world who have SOS. It’s a very big part of our business and my directorate is advising governments around the world is how do you put in place the right internal controls to make sure that you mitigate against demands for corruption payments.
Greg MedCraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs, OECD: 06:54
So for example, you know, making sure you have open, public procurement, right, that it’s all traceable, that uh, the end, but also we’re looking at things at the moment that’s called compliance without borders, where basically you have, a state, an entity, enterprise employees coming from there into the private sector to understand how they deal with compliance, anti-corruption. So there’s many things you can do both from private sector and government sector. And at the end of the day, it’s all about underpinning trust. The social license today, communities in most countries around the world do no longer tolerate corruption. More everyday grows because as they appreciate that, you know, 10% of the world’s GDP goes to paying corruption. That’s 10% does that. That’s 10% that actually could be going to building hospitals and schools.
Matt Bird – Show Host, Traders Network Show: 07:51
And I just read in this from the CEO of the global compact. She published this article and invitation to help meet the goals for the UN SDGs, which is only 1% of global GDP. So if 10% of the were to cease, we could put that money back into the global community. We’d be on track.
Greg MedCraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs, OECD: 08:11
That’s why we focus heavily on fighting corruption.
Matt Bird – Show Host, Traders Network Show: 08:16
Wow. All right. Everybody, Greg Medcraft, the head of the OECD finance and enterprise affairs. Listen, thanks for coming on the show. I’m going to have you back on. I hope I can get you the regular, if anything via satellite because tracking you down in different countries is sometimes a challenge. But listen, we’ll be right back for the next guest. You’re not going to want to miss him on the panel. Can you tell us about the panel that are going to be on?
Greg MedCraft, Director of Financial & Enterprise Affairs, OECD: 08:37
The panel we’re on now, it’s talking about sustainability and why it matters.
Matt Bird – Show Host, Traders Network Show: 08:42
This guy knows what he’s talking about. We’ll be right back at these messages. Don’t go away.