[In] the near future…The financial landscape is deeply shaken by a series of crises and scandals. Financial power continues its mutation, and a coalition of international institutions, governments and social actors propose a global mechanism to regulate and tax financial transactions. The explicit political rationale for the measure is to contribute to the alleviation of poverty and to  help the transition toward sustainability. It turns out that the newly elected U.S. Government is favorable to the regulation. The executive committee of a Big Bank convenes to discuss the new rules, and three senior executives propose different strategies to react to the situation. The first wants to aggressively fight the politics and work on public opinion in order to avoid regulation. The second would like to wait and see what happens while communicating the business’ good intentions to the public. And finally, the third seeks to align with the political effort and turn it into an opportunity to meet stakeholders’ ethical expectations and reinvent the Big Bank.

The CEO of the Big Bank has to decide about the strategy but, during the committee meeting, the Big Bank becomes the subject of an international grassroots campaign launched by activists who claim to fight financial injustice and promote  increased accessibility to financial services by the poor. To complicate things further, the highly sophisticated campaign is led by a former executive of the Big Bank, who was officially laid off for ethical reasons, but is convinced that she was a scapegoat. She proposes an ultimatum to the CEO: Either he cooperates or he will be personally targeted in the campaign. Media and financial analysts are already asking for the Big Bank’s reaction. //Read more