Risk management acronym of the day
From Mimi Swartz’s 9,700-word monster article on Sir Allen Stanford:
Stanfordâs now demoralized compliance departmentâresponsible for making sure the company followed the rulesâcoined a new term: FUMU, for âfuck up and move up.â
I think this happens at many banks, if not quite as egregiously as it happened at Stanford. It’s the Peter Principle taken one step further: if the people in charge of promotions are themselves utterly incompetent and/or malign, they might well end up promoting fellow-incompetents rather than anybody honest or good at what they do. And it only takes one look at Stanford’s now-arrested chief investment officer to see the natural conclusion of that process.