A report on last week's Business in the Community Conference suggests it is getting easier to see who is committed to responsible business.

If a company's responsible business focus is on "giving back" then it appears those initiatives have been the first to suffer as cash flows tighten. Those were hardly indicative of a truly responsible approach to business in the first place.

More disturbing are tales of banks completely stripping out their CSR teams. Either those teams had the wrong kind of skills needed for rebuilding trust in the sector (i.e. they were focused on the goodwash version of CSR rather than on instilling an ethical culture and appropriate corporate governance mechanisms) or financial firms have not realised the extent of the problems their sector faces.