September 26, 2008
Writing in The Times, Zaki Cooper, a consultant to the Cambridge Interfaith Programme, describes how business bosses are creating faith-based networks, activities and office space to cater for the religious beliefs of employees.
While once believers kept faith and work relatively separate, now they are increasingly intertwining. With the growth of mass migration the UK’s population has become more diverse, and its labour market, in consequence, multifaith rather than, as once was the case, predominantly Christian. In London alone, there are 42 nationalities with communities of more than 10,000. It is now common for people to work in environments with at least one person from another religion or ethnic background.This makes the workplace an inadvertent forum for interfaith encounters…
…Alongside the higher profile of a diversity of faiths in the workplace, believers increasingly show signs of wanting to integrate faith and work. Ken Costa, the committed Christian who is one of the City’s best-known investment bankers, has argued that:
“if the Christian faith is not relevant in the workplace, it is not relevant at all”.
…Faith and business do not necessarily have to be reluctant partners, they can reinforce each other. Recent research by the management consultant firm McKinsey Australia shows that companies which embrace “spiritual techniques” benefit from improved productivity and turnover. In any case, as current trends develop, faith looks set to become an issue for the boardroom.
You can read the full article here.
Evening Standard: City Spy
Say a Little Prayer for UBS
It was just over a year ago that UBS began its descent into the credit-crunch abyss with the ousting of chief executive Peter Wuffli, and it doesn’t look to be in any better shape now. So it is perhaps no surprise the bank is calling on one of its respected former employees for divine guidance. That man is Ken Costa, who now works at Lazard and is advising UBS on its strategic options. Costa is the former chairman of UBS’s European investment banking operation and, until last year, a 31-year veteran of the Swiss bank. He is also a lay preacher at Holy Trinity Brompton, the Anglican church in Knightsbridge, London, and author of God at Work, in which he writes about how his faith gave him strength when he lost sleep over a proprietary position that UBS had taken in a client’s stock. While praying is not a formal risk-management tool, it is probably worth a go as the credit crisis shows little signs of abating.
According to the FT, ‘it seems Mr Costa doesn’t have an official role in the strategic review Lazard is conducting for UBS, where there might still be some sensitivities.’
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Reliance calls on Ken Costa to broker £35bn MTN deal
The Times has reported that Ken Costa, has been appointed by Reliance Communications, the second largest Indian mobile company, to advise on its negotiations with MTN, Africa’s largest wireless group.
The two companies are locked in exclusive talks that could create a new colossus in emerging mobile markets with a market value of more than £35 billion. More.
Anil appoints Lazard man to lead on MTN talks
Reliance Communications has appointed a veteran London banker and one-time anti-apartheid activist to lead its team of advisers on talks with South Africa’s MTN that could create a giant Indo-African telecommunications group.
Ken Costa, chairman of international business at Lazard, will lead Reliance’s negotiations with MTN, the two companies being locked in exclusive talks that could create a company with a market value of more than $68.7 billion.
Now a well-known city banker, Costa in his youth was the leader of the students’ council at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, then a centre for anti-apartheid activism, and spoke about his passion for justice in a recent interview.
The current chairman of MTN is 56-year-old Cyril Ramaphosa, a veteran of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle who resigned key positions in the government after losing the contest to be South African president to Thabo Mbeki in 1997.
Ramaphosa continues to be a member of the executive committee of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. More.
Ken Costa addressed more than four hundred students, alumni, and friends of the Ivy League universities at the annual Ivy League Congress on ‘Faith and Action.’ Sponsored by the Christian Union, the event was held at the Yale Omni Hotel from the 11-13 April.
Ken spoke about how faith should lead to action, how his career had taken shape and he also gave some advice to those about to embark on careers and how to make decisions.
Matt Bennett, founder of the Christian Union, said, ‘Ken Costa was an incredible and wonderful blessing to us all! We loved having him!’
Another delegate said, ‘[Ken's] presentation challenged many students - their feedback was ecstatic. [The] message could not have been more aligned with the purpose of the weekend. Thanks for making the trip to Yale.’
Listen
Listen to the talk here.
Read the talk here.
The New York Times
‘Three years ago a group of evangelical Ivy League alumni formed the Christian Union, an organization intended to “reclaim the Ivy League for Christ,” according to its fund-raising materials, and to “shape the hearts and minds of many thousands who graduate from these schools and who become the elites in other American cultural institutions.”
Founder Matt Bennett says, The Christian Union’s immediate goal, was to recruit campus missionaries. “What is happening now is good,” Mr. Bennett said, “but it is like a finger in the dike of keeping back the flood of immorality.”
“Trends in the Ivy League today could shape the culture for decades to come,” he said. “So many leaders come out of these campuses. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices are Ivy League grads; four of the seven Massachusetts Supreme Court justices; Christian ministry leaders; so many presidents, as you know; leaders of business - they are everywhere.”
He added, “If we are going to change the world, we have got, by God’s power, to see these campuses radically changed.”‘
Published May 2005, read more here.
Some extracts from Lunch with the FT.
Ken Costa and I take in the pink marbled splendour of The Ritz Restaurant in London. The winter sun streams through the window behind us. In the distance, a pianist tinkles away at “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. “So you bought this place?” I say. “My very good friends and clients did,” he says – his very good friends and investment banking clients being the Barclay twins, Sir David and Sir Frederick, who bought The Ritz in 1995. “I rather like supporting clients. I think it’s always useful, you know.”
…The restaurant is filling up now. Our starters are excellent. Costa keeps an eye on the new arrivals. Let us talk about your years as a student leader in South Africa, I say. “Ah, you jog me with nostalgia for those days,” he says. Costa was president of the students’ council at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, a hotbed of white student radicalism. “Being a young 20-year-old, I had a burning passion for justice, and the injustices of the apartheid system were horrible in every way, mostly because of the dehumanising effect – curiously, not only on the recipients but also on those who were meting it out. We, the students, became the vanguard of agitation against the government.”
They were exciting times, but frightening ones, too. “You’d hear knocks on the door from strange policemen.” Did that happen to him? “Yes.” Friends were locked up. One, Ahmed Timol, died after falling from a 10th floor window while under interrogation in Johannesburg’s notorious John Vorster Square. “There were some very brave and courageous people,” he says. His associates included Steve Biko, the black student leader, who also later died while in police detention. “He was the outstanding leader of our generation,” Costa says.
…Costa’s family, farmers of Lebanese origin, were not political. What turned him against apartheid? He boarded at an all-white Christian Brothers school in Pretoria. One day the students heard that a Chinese boy would be joining them, but he never turned up because the law did not allow it. “I was deeply offended by that,” he says. With this came the “realisation that we were an entirely privileged group of people and that we never had normal contact with black people”.
…Costa is, today, not just a Christian. He is chairman of Alpha International, an interdenominational programme that has spread around the world. More than 10 million people have attended Alpha’s relaxed meals and introductions to Christianity. What convinced him of Christianity’s rightness? He pauses to turn down a waiter’s offer of another drink. “Well, it was a case of being persuaded. Claims that were made by Jesus were, in fact, true.”
It is unusual in Britain to find people talking openly about religion. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s press spokesman, said: “We don’t do God.” Blair himself, who recently became a Catholic, said he never discussed his faith while in office because people would have considered him a “nutter”. Costa insists this is changing. “There is a greater openness than ever before for people to discuss the issues of religion. We do do God. We talk about it.”
Costa last year wrote a book called God at Work, examining workplace issues such as ambition, disappointment and money from a Christian point of view. As he talks, he draws on business terms. The Bible is “the prospectus”, as in, “That’s what the prospectus sets out, from Genesis to Apocalypse.” City work puts family life under stress, particularly when you are in the middle of a bid, but “it’s the trend that matters” – in other words, you can give your family more time when the deal is done.
…Is it true that he has read the Financial Times and the Bible every morning for over 30 years? It is true, he says, adding: “The only question is: which comes first?” And which does come first? The FT? “I know.” He gives a naughty giggle. “Awful.”
As the World Economic Forum gets underway in Davos, Ken Costa writes in The Times.
The banking crisis, politicial tensions and the threat of terrorism fuel international fear…
The annual gathering of Davos is always a stimulating way to start the new year, offering a chance to discern the critical trends lying ahead for the global economy. Beyond the eclectic seminars and high-visibility plenary sessions that frame the formal agenda for the meetings, it is always fascinating to find out what the underlying, and often unexpressed, key issues are.
Tellingly, the closing session of this year’s forum, to be led by Tony Blair, is on the unsettling, if prevailing, topic of: “Why are we afraid of the future?”
I am particularly looking forward to the debate on two topics that have been given high prominence this year: sovereign wealth funds; and the role of religion in the global economy.
Tony Blair will be spearheading a discussion on the implications for the global economy of religion and faith communities in the world. It will need his skills to steer the discussion on faith and modernisation, something that is never easy when the debates are theological and not economic.
Will faith-based societies be a restriction or an advantage in developing the global economy? As the corporate landscape changes, and companies become more involved in the communities of the developing world, new corporations will emerge in strongly religious societies. So the debate on the relationship between the business community and the faith-based world can only intensify.
Davos is ahead of the curve by giving this debate the prominence it deserves. Many institutions lack the basic tools for undertaking co-operation, dialogue and effective decision-making in the context of intensely held religious views. Davos could help in creating such a model and so helping to diffuse one of the most serious fears for the future.
Following his departure from UBS and on gardening leave until he starts with Lazard, Ken Costa has been in South Africa, where he was interviewed by Business Day.
‘Costa is on gardening leave — not that you’d know it. The first day of the 57-year-old’s trip back to SA is peppered with work. As the man who earlier this month ended his three-decade career with Swiss investment bank UBS sits down in the coffee shop of Sandton’s Michelangelo hotel, a former colleague from UBS comes over and greets him…
On Black Economic Empowerment
“Social transformation is not linear. Economic transformation is not linear either. There are bumps in the road. Models have to be tried and tested and seen how they work and how they fulfil changing objectives. My own view is that, give or take some examples, phase one has been a remarkable success. How it morphs into stable, sustainable, long-term investment is, of course, the question of the day.”
On Subprime Lending
How, then, does a Christian banker view the excesses that are now apparent in the collapse of the US subprime lending market, where greed led bankers to lend money to people who could not afford it and greed led people to borrow money that they had no hope of repaying?
“The markets overreact. It is the nature of markets to do so. And irresponsibility, uncontrolled greed, or irrational exuberance — call it what you wish — take hold of markets and these have to be corrected. At the moment, we’re inundated with knowledge, but we are knowledge-long and wisdom-short. There is a premium on pursuing wisdom, but it doesn’t always work in the capital markets.”
Read more here.
Business big shot: Ken Costa
‘Ken Costa appeared to be heading for a baptism of fire yesterday as his surprise departure from UBS after a career spanning more than 30 years was announced…
Throughout, he tried to square his devotion to Christianity with his career. This year, he recounted this in his book God at Work. His commitment to good works also saw him act as a trustee of the redevelopment appeal for St Paul’s Cathedral.
This time it will be cultural change he will have to reconcile, building a close working relationship with investment bankers who were regularly on the other side of fierce takeover deals.’
More in The Times.
September 6, 2007
Costa leaves UBS for Lazard
An article in the FT today announced the change of roles for Ken Costa.
‘Lazard, the independent investment bank, on Thursday strengthened its senior ranks by hiring Ken Costa from UBS as chairman of its international arm…
The hiring of Mr Costa comes a year after Lazard created a unified management structure for its European operations in a move designed to end the long-running rivalry between the bank’s London and Paris offices.
Mr Costa joined SG Warburg – now part of UBS – in 1976 and has spent his entire career at the bank. He is well known as a senior adviser with close links to a number of large British companies…
A committed Christian, he also recently wrote a book, God at Work, about reconciling religious belief with global capitalism…’
A friend of the family
Ken Costa likes to quote the Bible’s parable of talents, in which two servants who put their master’s money to work are rewarded, while the one who preserved the capital and took no risk is punished.
The 57-year-old investment banker has lived by the maxim, too, during a 30-year career as a rainmaker. After studying law and theology at Queen’s College, Cambridge, the South African-born banker joined SG Warburg in 1976 under its founder, the late Sir Siegmund Warburg…
More.
Lazard Press Release
In a press release Bruce Wasserstein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lazard said, ‘Ken Costa embodies the special character of Lazard, I have known him for over 20 years as a banker of unusual talent, integrity and professionalism. With hiring Ken, we reinforce our strategy of servicing clients with the top talent around the world.’
Mr. Costa has been particularly involved in structuring cross-border mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Mr. Costa also specialises in providing advice to family controlled companies, and has advised a number of Middle Eastern investment companies on acquisitions. He studied law and theology at Queens College, Cambridge.
Banking veteran Costa quits UBS for Lazard
Telegraph article on the move.
September 5, 2007
‘…Whatever happened to moral responsibility among the financial institutions? Do their employees have no conscience at all?
One robust answer to these questions came earlier this year with the publication of God at Work: Living Every Day with Purpose, by Ken Costa, the South Africa-born vice-chairman of UBS Investment Bank, and a 30-year City of London veteran.
It might seem surprising to see a seasoned dealmaker fromone of the world’s toughest professions trying to get a discussion going about God. There is not always a lot of evidence of benign intent in the banking sector…
But Mr Costa is not advocating a softhearted approach to business. He would not have survived at SG Warburg, SBC and now UBS had he ever done so. He reminds us that in the Bible’s parable of the talents (Luke 19: 11-27) it is the two servants who put the master’s money to work who are rewarded, while the one who preserved the capital and took no risk is punished. And he quotes the great Methodist John Wesley, who told his followers: “Gain all you can, without hurting either yourself or your neighbour.”
Mr Costa has written his book because he senses the need for a greater awareness of spirituality even in the heat of commercial battle. The world may be more efficient, but perhaps it is also “more efficiently unfair”. And the - now faltering - recent bull market has made him even more aware of the dangers of excess. “There seemed to be a headlong compassionless pursuit of financial reward without restraint,” he writes…
…at a time when scepticism per-sists about “do-gooding” ap-proa-ches to business, religious faith may offer an alternative values-based code of conduct. The credit crunch of 2007 suggests something other than a market triumphalist free-for-all is needed…
Could Christianity even prove a winning business strategy? The idea might provoke hollow laughter among many in business, even those who consider themselves Christians. Mr Costa, an evangelical Christian, is prepared to be mocked. “If the Christian faith is not relevant in the workplace it is not relevant at all,” he says…’
Read the full article here.
