Categorie archief: Essay

JPMorganChase Letter to Shareholders

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Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer | April 2026

“Dear Fellow Shareholders, In 2026, America is celebrating its 250th anniversary. Also, this year we are celebrating the 227th anniversary of JPMorgan Chase, which was founded in April 1799. This is the perfect time to rededicate ourselves to the values that made this great nation of ours — freedom, liberty, and opportunity — and to recognize that we all stand on our country’s shoulders.

The challenges we all face are significant. The list is long but at the top are the terrible ongoing war and violence in Ukraine, the current war in Iran and the broader hostilities in the Middle East, terrorist activity and growing geopolitical tensions, importantly with China. Our hearts go out to those whose lives are profoundly affected by these crises. We sincerely hope these global conflicts are properly resolved and that one day all of Europe and the Middle East will attain long-term stability and prosperity. Even in troubled times, we have confidence that America will do what it has always done — look to the values that have defined our singular nation and sustained our leadership of the free world…”

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Portfolio en

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In 2024, the PRIMO Europe board confirmed its portfolio. The portfolio was considered complete and promising for further development. The focus is that products and services should refocus more than ever on establishing public values and helping members become better equipped to be more effective in decision-making. It is the conviction that, based on experiences over the last few years with our roundtables, think tanks, and education, the perspective on risk has shifted towards true delivery, effectiveness, success, and performance.

Our members need models, tools, and techniques that provide genuine insight into matters, challenges, and issues related to public values and deliver effective solutions. The more general path of promoting frameworks or focusing on generic culture change is less favored. For effective navigation in times of high dynamics, a greater focus on systems thinking and resilience is needed. In view of the current positioning and development of risk management within the public domain, the conclusion is drawn that the needs of organisations working in or for the public domain have broadened considerably to include offering quality, safety, security, performance, precaution, continuity and reliability.

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Leadership in Risk Management

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Marie-Gemma Dequae (ed.) with HBR Analytics Services for FERMA, Zurich and PRIMO | 2013

THE C-SUITE IS taking a stronger role in leading the risk management effort at major primarily European companies, underscoring the higher priority risk has assumed in the wake of several years of financial and economic turmoil. Congruently, companies are underscoring the need for strong board involvement to facilitate decision-making regarding strategic and enterprise-wide risks and to encourage acceptance of a culture of risk management further down in the organization. Companies are struggling, however, to create a wider role for the risk function as a participant in strategic planning and transformational initiatives. And European executives express concern about the robustness of their risk management processes and channels of communication.

Vast changes in how business is done, sparked by the technology revolution and globalization, are meanwhile raising concerns about company and brand risk. These and other challenges are prompting companies to devote more resources to defining their risk appetite and to tracking, measuring, and analyzing risk through such tools as “heat maps,” key risk indicator scorecards, scenario analysis, and loss forecasting. The challenge, however, some executives said, is still to make sure that risk is “owned” at appropriate levels of the organization and that risks are communicated efficiently, such that top management and the board can make timely, fact-based decisions about how to address them.

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Kijk op vluchtelingenvraagstuk

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Een beschouwing vanuit waarde- én risicoperspectief

Jack Kruf | juni 2016

In dit essay beschouw ik het vluchtelingenvraagstuk vanuit waarde- en risicoperspectief. Ik kom tot een aantal overdenkingen. Het voorliggende vraagstuk gaat in mijn ogen over onze gezamenlijke bereidheid en capaciteit om vluchtelingen te willen en te kunnen opvangen en in te passen in onze samenleving. Het vraagstuk beroert ons zeer.

Jack Kruf

De dynamiek is groot. Ons democratisch stelsel piept en kraakt. De samenleving spreekt zich uit over de letterlijke en figuurlijke grenzen. Dat is ook een politiek-bestuurlijk vraagstuk. De publieke waarde ‘balans en cohesie in de samenleving’ komt onder druk met de grote instroom. Politici en bestuurders spreken over publieke risico’s en hoe we het anders moeten doen.

Waarden en risico’s

Mark Moore definieert publieke waarde als ‘de waarde die de overheid creëert door zijn burgers en die burgers waarderen’. Deze soort waarden zijn niet alleen verankerd in de Nederlandse grondwet, maar bijvoorbeeld ook in de Geneefse conventies, de Rechten van de Mens en de Four Freedoms van Roosevelt. 

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Leadership failures

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By John O’Dea | 24 May 2017

We in Europe believe that our democratic system provides the foundation for a great set of principles and values that lead to good public governance. Public leadership is embedded within this, at least we think it is fair to say we ‘believe’ this. One might even say we have believed this for a long time since democracy traces back to the Greek concept of democracy over 2,500 years ago.

John O’Dea

However, it is also fair to say that within this democratic system the evidence of frequent failures of public leadership abound, beginning with the Peloponnesian War and rattling on for a very long time thereafter. There is a sense today, however that public risks occur at a much faster pace and with wider scale impacts – disruptions caused by climate change and cybercrime, large scale pollution and poverty, fundamental lack of social cohesion, water shortage and migration issues being just a few well-discussed examples.

Given that chequered record, we might in fact say that leadership in the public sector is itself a critical source of risk.

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SK x OK x IV = R

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Jack Kruf en Hans Redert | januari 2019

Op basis van een serie interviews met bestuurders en managers in het publieke domein, hebben wij de volgende ‘eenvoudige’ formule ontwikkeld om ex ante de kans op Resultaat van besturing te kunnen bepalen. De formule is ontwikkeld binnen het publieke domein van de gemeente, vanuit de unieke positie die wij mochten hebben als gemeentesecretaris. De formule:

SK x OK x IV = R

Er is bij toepassing ervan, bij de start, te allen tijde een voorliggende kwestie nodig die concreet op tafel ligt en die opgelost dient te worden. Immers, anders valt er niets te besturen. De formule komt dáár tot zijn recht, omdat er dan de meeste winst te behalen valt in de kwaliteit van de besturing of het management. De koppen in het dagelijkse nieuws, de verkiezingsprogramma’s en collegeakkoorden maken duidelijk dat het arsenaal van kwesties rijkelijk aanwezig is. Genoeg keuze dus.

Er zijn in de formule, die met uiterste zorg is ontwikkeld, drie determinanten die zich in de vorm van een vermenigvuldiging voordoen en die bepalend zijn voor het uiteindelijke resultaat.

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Public Value & Risk Report 2026

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The Risk of Leadership

PRIMO Res Publica | March 2026

We entered our news and reports into our database, combined them with our surveys related to the FORTE® Framework, a scan of our LinkedIn network posts and asked our AI companion to summarize the headlines as of 23 March 2026.

The results are highly recognisable and comparable with recent surveys by the United Nations, the European Commission, and the World Economic Forum. The results are, in our view, the starting point for action; however, the question arises, by whom exactly?. The fact is that the government and its political leaders are the main players involved in public values and play a dominant role in causing public risks, as mentioned. It seems that leadership itself is under the microscope, and the main factor behind the subtitle of this reporting: ‘the Risk of Leadership’.

Definitions

We used the following definitions.

  • “Public value refers to the value created by the government through laws, regulations, services, and any other action. In a democratic society, this value is defined by the public itself. Value is determined by citizens’ preferences expressed in a variety of ways, and thus it provides a rough yardstick against which to gauge the public institutions and government policies.” Moore (1995).
  • Public Risk is defined as ‘possible harm to a chosen public value’, as derived from Kates & Kasperson (1983) and Renn & Klinke (2002).

Public Values

Based on recent Eurobarometer surveys and European public debates (2024-2025), the public values most mentioned as being at stake for European citizens are fundamentally linked to democracy, security, and social cohesion. These values are seen as vital to maintaining stability in a turbulent geopolitical environment. The most frequently mentioned public values at stake include:

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