Latest news with #JohnKay
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Crash in Meade County leaves 1 dead, 2 fighting for life in hospital
BRANDENBURG, Ky. (FOX 56) — A crash in Meade County on Saturday night led to a 20-year-old Battletown man being killed, with a passenger in his car and the driver of another vehicle flown to a Louisville hospital in critical condition. Troopers with Kentucky State Police (KSP) Post 4 in Elizabethtown were dispatched around 11:15 p.m. on Saturday by the Meade County Sheriff's Office, which asked for help investigating a two-vehicle crash near the 4100 block of Payneville Road. Man accused of attacking 2 with knife in Berea Crash in Meade County leaves 1 dead, 2 fighting for life in hospital 2024 Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan snaps 5-race losing skid with win in Blame at Churchill Downs An initial investigation showed that Robert Eldridge, 20, of Battletown, was driving a 2014 Ford Mustang heading west on KY-144 when he tried to pass another car before allegedly hitting a 2025 Toyota Tacoma driven by John Kay, 44, of Louisville. Eldridge was pronounced dead at the scene by the Meade County Coroner's Office. Kaw and a passenger in Eldridge's car were flown to the University of Louisville Hospital for treatment of life-threatening injuries, per a news release. The area of the crash was closed for several hours to allow troopers to reconstruct what happened. An investigation into the deadly crash remains ongoing. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Forbes
5 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
What Leaders Can Learn From 50 Years Of Economic Insight
Almost everything we think we know about business is wrong. So argues Sir John Kay, one of Britain's most incisive economic thinkers. His latest book, The Corporation in the 21st Century, is a treasure trove of insights for leaders seeking to navigate volatility and uncertainty in today's markets. I recently had the privilege of participating in a conversation with Sir John Kay hosted by the University of Oxford's Kellogg College and Skoll Centre. Professor Joshua Getzler, Visiting Fellow Suzanne Schneider, and Professor Jonathan Michie OBE joined in the discussion of Kay's analysis of the transformation of business over the last half-century. His is a call to rethink not only what business is, but how we talk about it. Kay's reflections are both timeless and acutely relevant. What can today's leaders learn from his work? I offer three key takeaways. Kay reminds us that the dominant time horizons in business today – quarterly earnings, rapid investor turnover, short CEO tenures – are fundamentally at odds with the time horizons required to build the industries of the future. Supply chain resilience, energy security, and food security are but a few examples of the multi-generational challenges leading global businesses must solve to stay relevant. And yet, short-term incentives and flimsy governance mechanisms for long-term commitment continue to hamstring even the most forward-thinking companies. Part of the reason for this, Kay observes, is that corporate ownership has fundamentally shifted. Citing examples from airlines to Amazon, Kay points out that today's largest firms own little of the capital they deploy. Rather, capital is treated as a service, rendering the very concept of 'owning' a means of production outdated. This creates a fundamental mismatch between the investment horizons of businesses and the timelines on which the industries of the future depend. Kay's idea is this: If we are to build businesses that are truly resilient and trustworthy, we must reorient corporate governance around long-term value creation. In what I found to be the book's most compelling chapter, Ambiguity Is a Feature, Not a Bug, Kay addresses what he calls the need for 'moral imagination' in modern business. His comments call to mind the work of Elizabeth Anscombe, one of Oxford's most celebrated female philosophers, who argued, 'Our moral imagination is the ability to conjure what lies beyond our direct experience'. This is Kay's call to action for leaders: from scrupulously researched historical examples, he builds a compelling argument that stakeholders are not mere inputs to be managed, but ends in themselves. This reframes the conversation, inviting leaders to move from transactional to relational approaches to strategy. Rather than reducing debate to the tired binary of shareholder versus stakeholder capitalism, Kay invites us to ask a deeper question: 'How can a corporation create value in a way that is durable because it is mutual?' His conclusion is simple but profound: 'If the corporation is to flourish, it must contribute to the flourishing of the society in which it operates.' This is not sanctimonious. It is systems thinking, and it is smart. Perhaps Kay's most lasting legacy will be his insistence that today's business language – the metaphors, models, and assumptions leaders use daily – are anachronistic. The language of principal-agent, of command and control, of the firm as a machine – these no longer describe business well, if they ever did. In today's business landscape, they obscure as much as they explain. This matters because language shapes imagination. Imagination shapes action and innovation. If we want to build institutions that are fit for this century and the next, we must begin by speaking differently about what they are for and whom they serve. Kay's book is not merely a critique. It is an invitation to imagine better. In a time when the word 'capitalism' itself is often deployed as a rhetorical device rather than an analytical term, Kay calls for precision. His critique—that 'capitalism' means wildly different things in different contexts—is not pedantic. It is a vital insight. From the deregulated markets of the late 20th century to today's state-led capitalism to data-driven global economic giants, the realities of 'capitalism' differ starkly. So too should our analysis. Business has fundamentally changed since the last century. Remarkably, most of the vocabulary we use to describe it has not. And that, Kay argues, may be our greatest liability. Leaders must grapple with meaning. Today's leadership challenge is to build businesses that are not only efficient and competitive in the short term, but credible, trustworthy, and resilient over time. Sir John Kay's work is a masterclass in how to begin.
Forbes
25-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
What Pope Francis Thought About Business Ethics
As the world mourns the loss of Pope Francis, I am reminded of my own interaction with the Vatican early in Francis's papacy. The Pope was eliciting the input from the business community on how one overcomes social and economic exclusion. This dialogue occurred not long after Francis wrote Evangelii Gaudium in which he prays for more politicians capable of 'sincere and effective political dialogue' aimed at addressing the social and economic barriers that threaten our societies across all geographies, political and economic philosophies, walk of life. The Pope goes further in advocating a 'new political and economic mindset which would help break down the wall of separation between the economy and the common good of society'. But why should there even be a wall separating the economy from the common good of society? Clearly this perception of a two-speed global economy, delivering with largesse for a 'mobile minority', seemingly at the expense of the immobile majority, is the principal reason behind this year's Edelman Trust Barometer finding that a majority (61%) of global respondents believe '… that government and business make their lives harder and serve narrow interests, and wealthy people benefit unfairly from the system.' And it is this widely held public sense of too many being outside the bakery window looking in, that has undermined political stability and social order. This 'separation between the economy and the common good…' follows a period of hyper-globalization during which to many wealth creation was seen as a desirable end in itself. However, wealth should not be an end in itself, but rather an outcome of the generation of real value. To be sustainably successful, business leaders need to pursue the creation of great life-enhancing products, or new consumer-enabling services, or great ideas….and wealth will follow. John Kay, the founding head of Oxford University's Said School of Business, calls this 'obliquity' and argues that you cannot find happiness by desperately looking for happiness itself (happiness is the result of pursuing those activities/things that genuinely make you happy). So, too, wealth generation is the result of pursuing those things that add value. During my tenure as CEO, I would remind my peers (and Board) that purpose drives performance and that performance/profit is the outcome and not the goal. Find those pursuits that add real value, and wealth will follow. Much of this might seem contrary to what many believe is the fundamental principle of capitalism, perhaps most famously articulated by Milton Friedman in his influential 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom, noting that 'There is one and only one social responsibility of business: to use its resources to engage in activities designed to increase its profits…' And it is perhaps under this rubric we have constructed this 'wall between the economy and the common good…,' which Pope Francis decried. But there should be no such wall—even in the most orthodox capitalist system. The intellectual father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, is too well remembered for such phrases as 'the invisible hand.' In truth, Smith's legacy, and assumptions about capitalism, have been grossly oversimplified. Smith was a dogged advocate of the view that free enterprise absolutely required strong moral and ethical foundations and that most market participants needed to be those guided by (in his words) 'propriety, prudence and benevolence' for the system to work properly. Smith is, of course, best known for his 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations, which many consider to be the founding document of free-market capitalism. But Smith himself placed greater value on his earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which he explores 'the ability to think and act morally in the face of pure natural interest'. So today it is appropriate for us to recall Pope Francis's admonition that, 'business is a vocation, a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves as challenged by a greater meaning in life' enabling them 'truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all' . The world will be in a much better place the sooner we were to follow this Papal exhortation not just as a moral imperative, but also as an economic necessity.
CBC
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Long considered an American rock anthem, 'Born to Be Wild' has a Canadian backstory
Released in 1968, the song Born to Be Wild is a classic — you'll hear it in commercials, in movies and on television, at birthday parties, weddings and corporate events. The song transcends generations. Its energy, raw defiance and that iconic guitar line have made it one of rock's most powerful anthems. "Born to Be Wild, it's one of the best songs any rock band ever made," says musician Jello Biafra who played with the Dead Kennedys. The song is the signature hit of the band Steppenwolf but also represents a turning point in music history. It was a time when flower power was beginning to wilt and the world was turning dark; it was the era of the Vietnam war, assassinations, protests, and social unrest. Made famous by the cult-classic film Easy Rider, it was iconic Americana. Yet, four out of five band members were Canadian, and two of those, John Kay and Nick St. Nicholas, were German immigrants. Their story is told in the new documentary Born to Be Wild: The Story of Steppenwolf now streaming on CBC Gem. Behind the rebellious roar of Born to Be Wild is a surprising origin story that is as much about cultural upheaval as it is about the musicians who created it. Watch | Musicians Alice Cooper, Jello Biafra and others talk about Born to Be Wild Musicians Alice Cooper, Cameron Crowe, Jello Biafra and others talk about Born to Be Wild 13 days ago Duration 1:55 Steppenwolf's roots were in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood Born Joachim Krauledat in 1944 in East Prussia, where his father was killed at war before his birth, John Kay and his mother were refugees who escaped to West Germany and eventually moved to Canada in the late '50s, landing in Toronto. To add to their struggles, John was diagnosed at an early age with a severe visual impairment, achromatopsia, a rare condition that causes limited vision, sensitivity to light, and colour blindness. He is legally blind. The dark sunglasses he wore on stage were worn because he had a severe aversion to light, not because he was trying to be cool. Around the same time, Nick St. Nicholas, born Klaus Kassbaum, came to Canada with his family from post-war Germany. They both came of age in the blossoming music scene of Toronto in the early '60s – now known as the Haight Ashbury or Greenwich Village of the North. John was honing his blues-influenced guitar and singing skills, and as a solo artist, he played in the coffeehouses of Yorkville. Previously a sleepy residential neighbourhood, in those years Yorkville was coming alive with a burgeoning hippie folk music scene: "It was a magnet for those that just felt out of place in the regular neighbourhoods," remembers Kay in Born to Be Wild: The Story of Steppenwolf. These coffeehouses were the venues that became the meeting grounds for musicians, artists and intellectuals. Figures like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and David Clayton-Thomas all made their mark here. The scene in Yorkville mirrored the larger global movements, where music was no longer just entertainment —it became a powerful tool for social and political change. A few streets away, Yonge Street venues were blasting out rock and roll and R&B, to the likes of Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks – with a young Robbie Robertson on guitar. The two music scenes collided as a breeding ground for young musicians like John and Nick. "Toronto was the nexus of American music and British music," says Canadian music producer Bob Ezrin in Born to Be Wild. "If you take it on a per capita basis, the people coming out of Toronto, we're punching way above our weight class." Through a mutual friend, John was introduced to Nick, who was playing in clubs with fellow Oshawa musicians in a band called Jack London and the Sparrows. Just around that time, the band was separating from singer Jack London and were looking for a replacement. John and Nick connected over their love of music and shared background. John started jamming with them and eventually was invited to join the band, renamed The Sparrows: Nick St. Nicholas on bass, Jerry Edmonton on drums, his brother Dennis (later known as Mars Bonfire) on guitar, and Goldy McJohn on keyboards. This was the foundation of what became Steppenwolf. The story of an iconic song: Born to Be Wild The Sparrows first went to New York and then travelled to Los Angeles in search of success. Nick, who was the only one with a driver's license, drove the band across the continent. "Los Angeles at that time, this was a gritty town," says John Kay's daughter, Shawn. "Coming out of the ashes and being tough. And that's where hard rock came from." The scene in Los Angeles would also influence their sound. In L.A. they played alongside bands like the Doors, but it was San Francisco where, by the late 1960s, the city's counterculture was in full swing. The band went north and it was there that they first attracted a cult audience, including a biker crowd that started to converge on their shows. In San Francisco, the band eventually parted ways over creative differences. They scattered, went back to L.A., forging their way alone, or with new bands. Eventually, John brought most of the band back together to form Steppenwolf. Dennis Edmonton (aka Mars Bonfire) departed from the band to pursue a solo career shortly after, but left them with a demo of the first version of the band's breakout hit. Living in a small apartment in L.A. where he couldn't use an amplifier, he recorded an unplugged, almost whispered version of Born to Be Wild. John Kay and Steppenwolf – with new guitarist Michael Monarch — would take this recording to a whole new level that would become the iconic anthem we know today. The lyrics were a call for adventure: "Get your motor runnin' / Head out on the highway." It echoed with the biker subculture and exemplified everything that they stood for: riding, rebellion and freedom. It was no coincidence that Born to be Wild was featured in the film Easy Rider, an indie movie starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper who play two bikers on an epic road trip. The film became a huge mainstream success and solidified Steppenwolf's reputation as a biker band. Both the film and the song embodied the rebellion of the 1960s — a rebellion against conformity, authority, and societal norms. Watch | Members of Steppenwolf talk about the impact of Born to Be Wild Members of Steppenwolf talk about the impact of Born to Be Wild 13 days ago Duration 1:30 Written and directed by German filmmaker Oliver Schwehm, Born to Be Wild: The Story of Steppenwolf is a refreshing and unexpected story of a song that is ubiquitous in pop culture all over the world. Weaving the story through interviews and live scenes with surviving band members, their families, and artists like Alice Cooper, Taj Mahal, Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous), Klaus Meine (The Scorpions), Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys), Dale Grover (The Melvins), Bob Ezrin (Producer: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Taylor Swift, among others). It also features incredible archival footage and photos, including never-before-seen 8-mm film from Nick St. Nicholas' vault. The film brings to light an endearing new Canadian perspective on what was long considered to be an American music story. These days, John and Nick live about an hour's drive from each other in southern California. They hadn't been together for over 50 years, until this documentary reunited them at the premiere in Munich in July 2024. They were arm-in-arm on stage presenting the film. Says Rolling Stone music critic Cameron Crowe, "There's a lot of love for Steppenwolf out there and I think why their music remains present … It's authentic. It's not a toy band with toy emotions. They're actually sincere." Watch Born to Be Wild: The Story of Steppenwolf now streaming on CBC Gem.
Forbes
30-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Resilience In Financial Services: Learning From Ukraine
The economist John Kay once wrote that very little that happens in the finance sector has a genuine need for constant activity. If the stock market halts for a couple of days, so what? Only the most boring part of the financial system (to other people, not to me), which is payments, is "an essential utility on whose continuous functioning the modern economy depends'. So how can we learn from Ukraine make sure it is always there? What with recent geopolitical shifts, many people are beginning to think again about how that continuous functioning can be supported at manageable cost and so are looking at ways to add resilience to the payment systems on which the economy is wholly dependent. Sweden and Norway, for example, are rethinking their progress towards cashlessness because of their fears of Russian aggression. They are looking at how to ensure that cash remains in circulation and are telling their citizens to keep cash at home in case of emergencies. But is this the best strategy? It is worth listening to an actual expert about this. Hans Liwång, a professor of systems science for defense and security at the Swedish Defence University, said there was "a lack of evidence" about whether cash was better than electronic payments in the face of modern threats. The professor cited the natural example of Ukraine, where there are continuous attacks across both virtual and physical realms, to note that digital systems have proved vital to the country's resilience, saying that: 'Ukraine is a very good example of moving into the future when there is war rather than backwards'. What an interesting comment. Virtual and physical defences. © Helen Holmes (2021) This makes it important to explore the Ukrainian experience to learn about hardening the payment system by moving into the future. Central to the Ukrainian response was the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) recommending that stores, pharmacies and petrol stations give preference to cashless payments (which was vital because it reduced people's demand for cash) and ensuring the continued operation of the System of Electronic Payments (SEP), the ISO 20022 Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system for interbank payments that has handling more than 1.5 million payments per business day since the invasion. The NBU also organised the 'power banking' network of more than two thousand bank branches across Ukraine that can operate during a long-term blackouts. These branches have alternative energy sources, backup communication channels, enhanced cash collection capabilities and additional staff. (Resilience isn't only about money. Andriy Poddyerogin, Director of Payment Systems and Innovation Development at the NBU, noted also that the need to use tools for remote identification and verification. The largest public system for the remote identification of individuals in Ukraine, the NBU's BankID system, has been central to giving millions of people uninterrupted access to services under difficult circumstances.) Ukraine's largest acquirer is PrivatBank, which has around two-thirds of the market. Since the Russian invasion they have seen their POS estate climb by a third (their merchant service charge was reduced to zero immediately following the invasion to drive up merchant use) and their e-commerce customer base climb by a sixth. But most interesting of all (to me) they have seen their softPOS estate quadruple. When the power goes out, retailers switch to using their own mobile phones to take payments. (I've often wondered why retailers don't do that in the UK instead of shutting the supermarket doors when the POS network goes down.) Despite repeated blackouts, the POS network was up for 98% of the time in 2024 and a backup system of QR codes was introduced to continue purchases via customer handsets when the POS network was out. This offline ability has been very important in maintaining the Ukrainian economy and deserves attention. That point about supporting offline transactions is in my view critical to planning for truly resilient payments infrastructure. The Bank of Canada published a helpful note (Staff Analytical Note 2022-14) on what they called the 'archetypes" for a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in which they point out that a direct model — in which transacting parties directly provide their own oversight and communicate between themselves to exchange and record settlement information — is the only model that deliver cash-like person-to-person transactions, where counterparties can settle a transaction without involving a third party. The resilience of an electronic cash alternative is greatly enhanced by this kind of offline device-to-device transfer. There is no central system to take down, no switches to knock out, no network to paralyse and I am very optimistic about the ability of technology to deliver here. To explain why, let me begin by picking up something that John Kiff pointed out on the International Monetary Fund blog. John observed that almost all CBDC research projects and trials focus on online distributed ledger technology, whether it be Hyperledger Fabric in Nigeria or R3's Corda in Sweden. He then goes on to ask the obvious question: What will happen when communications go down in a war? What if there is a natural disaster? And what about the three-quarters of the world's adult low-income population that doesn't even have internet access? He concluded, as the Bank of Canada did (and I did long ago), that for a CBDC to be useful, it must work offline. And here, John says, the future of offline CBDCs may lie in the technological past. That's where his nod to a previous era and a push to develop offline digital payment systems using secure hardware rather than ledgers comes in. Some of the very valuable work done in this space goes back a generation, to that long ago time before smartphones, but it remains valid and it is important that the lessons learned then are not forgotten. In Europe, the digital euro is on the drawing board and will enter its 'second phase' of preparation in October of this year, by which time the ECB will have prepared an outreach plan, procurement standards and technology providers. More than a billion euros worth of contracts have been awarded and I cannot help but note that the budget for developing an offline solution accounts for some €662m out of contacts awarded, so clearly the priority is recognised at the highest levels. Last yeasr the Bank invited experts from across the mobile sector to explore the business and technical aspects of deploying the digital euro's offline functionality on embedded Secure Elements (eSE) and embedded SIMs (eSIM) in end-user devices. The key lesson from Ukraine, for me, is that the resilience of European retail payments depends on this offline capability, not using more physical cash but using offline central bank digital currency. In fact, I would go even further and say that there is no point in developing any central bank digital currency that does not work offline.
