Corporate scandals, shifting values and double-dealing lawyers did not die with the collapse of Enron or WorldCom.
In fact, corporate malfeasance and dishonest acts are thriving, a result of forgotten values and rationalizations, according to Utah billionaire Jon M. Huntsman Sr., whose new book, "Winners Never Cheat" ($19.95, Wharton School Publishing), impeaches Wall Street and today's business leaders for a brutal "win at all costs" climate.
Last week's indictments of 15 New York Stock Exchange specialists for illegal trading add to a long list of past abuses.
"I think we have little by little ground ourselves down to not know the difference between right and wrong," Huntsman said in an interview with the Deseret Morning News. "I think this is an evolutionary process that has gone on over the last 30 to 50 years, where lawyers have played a much more defining role in using the color gray in defining contracts instead of black and white."
Whatever the causes of the problem, Huntsman is not alone in raising the alarm.
David Callahan, author of "The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead," chronicles rising numbers of people — not just in business — willing to cheat on their taxes, embellish resumes or lie to their auto insurance company about a claim.
"Americans who wouldn't so much as shoplift a pack of chewing gum are committing felonies at tax time, betraying the trust of their patients, misleading investors, ripping off their insurance company or lying to their clients," Callahan writes. "In today's competitive economy, where success and job security can't be taken for granted, it's increasingly tempting to leave your ethics at home every morning."
While Huntsman, founder and chairman of Salt Lake-based chemical company Huntsman Corp., believes the majority of executives and employees are not engaged in improper behavior, he acknowledges that in his 40 years of negotiating Wall Street deals he has encountered few completely honest individuals.
"You go into a business meeting today and you're on guard immediately," Huntsman said. "You go in with a spirit that, I'm not going to let somebody take away something that's mine. You go in with an attitude of being on guard today rather than an attitude of how do we build together and how do we figure out how to be a partner."
Compensation, Huntsman argues, has replaced ethics as a governing principle.
"It is more a matter of intellectual dishonesty and lack of personal ethics," Huntsman said. "Wall Street has but one objective and one value: How much money can be made?"
David Warren, an independent business consultant who once worked in Manhattan and Tokyo in the financial services industry and now lives in Heber City, shares Huntsman's analysis.
"In the competitive big leagues, integrity is naivete," Warren said. "If your basic interest is not making that extra dollar — if your basic interest isn't to win at whatever cost — then you have predictable weaknesses that others can exploit."
Warren knows firsthand. After graduating from Harvard Business School, Warren recalls a job interview at a New York investment bank for a position in international institutional sales and trading.
"The first half of the day was really energizing — two phones at once, big deals going down," Warren said. "Then something happened. The whole atmosphere changed."
Warren was told a so-called "cram order" had been given. Cram orders meant that the firm had to unload some of its own proprietary investments — poised to lose money — to clients.
"They realized they had a big, bad position that they needed to unwind before the market in general knew," Warren said. "So in loyalty to your company you need to unwind it to those other people. You need to cram it down their throats. . . . You don't necessarily lie about it, you just talk about the good points. You're a salesman. It's not your job to give an impartial, balanced view."
The experience convinced Warren to turn down a six-figure salary offer from the firm.
But Huntsman's book goes beyond such Wall Street shenanigans. Perhaps his harshest criticism is saved for corporate lawyers, who Huntsman believes are "stripping America of personal accountability and trust."
"There is a fun fact that suggests America has 40 lawyers for every engineer, whereas China, emerging as one of the world's most dynamic nations, has 40 engineers for every lawyer," Huntsman said. "I am not sure exactly what that says, but it can't be a plus for the United States."
Warren said while working in New York City, he routinely experienced overbilling by outside corporate law firms.
"I always kept my own log of time," Warren said. "Because, invariably, when the bill came in, their hours would be significantly above anything that I had recorded. I had to be able to go through and point by point challenge their accounting. It seemed to be a game with them."
Callahan recounts one associate who revealed that billing occurs in six-minute increments but that lawyers routinely round up. "If you worked seven minutes, you bill 12; one minute, you bill six. . . . Everybody does it at some point."
Corporate lawyers, according to Huntsman, "make fortunes by manipulating contracts and finding ways out of signed deals. Many CEOs enjoy princely life-styles even as stakeholders lose their jobs, pensions, benefits, investments and trust in the American way."
As if dishonesty was not a big enough problem infecting business, Huntsman also lashes out against corporations for not giving enough to charitable causes and communities.
He recalls resigning from the board of directors of one company because the board would not agree to give back 1 percent of the company's profit to humanitarian and charitable causes.
"We not only have an obligation," Huntsman said, "we have an absolute duty to give back to the communities that helped us build our businesses and helped us build our financial net worth."
Recently, Business Week magazine ranked Huntsman as one of the nation's top "mega-givers." Huntsman has given or pledged $290 million in donations since 2000. And combined with an estimated lifetime of giving reaching $495 million, Huntsman ranks No. 26 on the magazine's list of the 50 Most Generous Philanthropists, giving away 22 percent of his net worth toward charitable causes.
All royalties from the sale of "Winners Never Cheat" will go to the Huntsman Cancer Foundation.
"Life isn't that complicated, and business can be won fairly and squarely on the playing field of life," Huntsman said. "We learned when we were kids certain lessons in the sandbox that were very straight and very honorable. They were playground lessons that weren't complicated, and they were always fair.
"An agreement always was an agreement, and when we told somebody that we were going to do something, our word was our bond."
E-mail: danderton@desnews.com