Those with responsibility for the assets of institutional investors have a fiduciary duty to attempt to earn the best possible risk adjusted returns and to comply with ethical standards. A satisfactory resolution of these, and other, conflicting demands requires a coherent intellectual framework. Such a framework can be based on a traditional scheme that analyses the various components of profit in terms of the requirements of justice. The framework provides a basis for discussing the major challenges facing the institutional investors. These relate to their role in rational asset selection, effective corporate governance, job creation and the minimisation of environmental impact.

The text of this paper, together with the abstract of the discussion held by the Faculty of Actuaries on 16 March 1998, are printed in British Actuarial Journal, 4, IV, 803-864

As part of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the actuarial profession, the link between Gray's Inn and Staple Inn is being renewed with the appointment by Gray's Inn of a Reader, who will give an annual lecture at Staple Inn as a contribution to legal and actuarial education.

The first reading for some 300 years gives an outline of the history of Staple Inn, from its origin in the fourteenth century as a ‘Staple’, a customs house for wool, later becoming an Inn of Chancery of one of the four Inns of Court, Gray's Inn. It was in the Inns of Chancery that training was given to law students. The progression of English law and of the training of law students are outlined, particularly how they affected Staple Inn and its subordinate relationship to Gray's Inn. The eventual loosening of the ties between the Inns of Court and the Inns of Chancery, the end of the involvement of Staple Inn with the legal profession, and the coming of the Institute of Actuaries to Staple Inn are all described.