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page 101 foreword
Foreword
The Second Berlin Congress ‘On the Capital Market
Relevance of Sustainable and Value-based Corporate
Governance’, held at the Atrium of the Deutsche Bank
AG on 12 May 2009, was the next logical step in the unfolding
of a series of events on the topic of the ‘Valuebased
Society as an Economic Factor’ launched in the
year 2008 by the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency.
With the emergence of the world economic crisis, the
concept of the ‘value-based society as an economic factor’
has become more topical than ever before. More
than that, it is an integral part of any serious deliberations
about a new world economic order. ‘Capital Market
Relevance of Sustainable and Value-based Corporate
Governance’ was the main focus of the Second Berlin
Congress. The Federal Chancellor says of these eventful
times: “The social market economy needs internal
guiding principles to achieve sustainable corporate
governance.”* 1
In the meantime, there is a consensus that without a
sustainable and value-based reform of the world economic
order, and that means a ‘top-down’ approach,
we will be unable to overcome the crisis. This implies
sustainable and value-based corporate governance introduced
consistently down to the very last enterprise.
This was and continues to be the ethical imperative
and remains today, more than ever before, of relevance
to the capital market!
* Speech by the Federal Chancellor, Dr. Angela Merkel, on 4 May
2009 on the topic ‘60 years of the Federal Republic of Germany
and 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – looking back and
looking ahead’, at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin.