For example, large institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds, have started to channel more funds to firms with sustainability commitments. Admittedly, the progress made on this front has been rather modest thus far, but it does have the potential to enable a wider range of stakeholders to determine the sustainability of finance and its role in facilitating sustainable economic growth. Conclusion I have not actually finished my story on the Challenger shuttle disaster at the beginning of my speech. After the harrowing accident, President Reagan formed the Rogers Commission to investigate the incident, and it was found that the accident could have been avoided entirely. The special commission reported that NASA’s organisational culture and decision-making processes were key contributing factors to the catastrophic event. NASA managers had been aware of the potentially fatal flaw in the O-rings since 1977, but did not respond appropriately. And on that fateful morning, warnings from engineers about the risks of launching in the low temperatures were met with contempt, and the superiors were not adequately notified of these technical concerns. Therein lies the importance of governance structures and how decisions are made. Governance influences decisions, and decisions shape outcomes. It is no different for financial governance. Be it financial decisions at the international or national level, public or private, corporates or financial institutions, households or individuals, sound financial governance is the bedrock of stable and robust economies.
Sukhdave Singh: Financial governance and economic growth Keynote address by Dr Sukhdave Singh, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Malaysian Economic Convention “Financial Governance and Economic Growth”, Kuala Lumpur, 28 September 2015. *  *  *  It is indeed an honour to be speaking to such a distinguished audience. It is also a great pleasure for me to be here this morning and join my colleagues in the Economics fraternity at this 2015 Malaysian Economic Convention. To begin, let me share with you a story. Twenty years ago, on 28 January 1986, the NASA space shuttle Challenger was launched. Seventy-three seconds into its flight, spectators were horrified as the space shuttle broke apart in a fiery display and disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean. Seven astronauts died. The catastrophe was traced to the failure of a single O-ring – a simple seal at a joint on one of the rocket boosters. The O-ring failed due to the unusually cold temperatures on the morning of the launch. Relative to the highly sophisticated technologies involved in building and launching the shuttle, the O-ring was considered established technology, one with a patent history of 90 years by the time the Challenger was launched. It was as ironic as it was instructive that such a complex machine, incorporating the most advanced aerospace technology of its time, failed and combusted due to a component as trivial and basic as an O-ring.