What is worse: running a distribution warehouse in a sleepy part of the UK which is described as a Victorian workhouse, or bribing people to sell your products in two of the most important countries in the world?
On the corporate governance scale they are both pretty bad. Personally, I think bribing state-employed healthcare officials in Russia and China to recommend more of AstraZeneca's drugs, or at least make sure they are on the recommended list, is pretty bad. In the case of Sports Direct, the working conditions are not great, but they were not bribing anyone to buy their products. Federal regulators in the US have extracted around $5.5m from AstraZeneca and, as is the way of these things, it has not admitted any wrong doing. Corporate governance - doing better business by doing busine...
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