The governance of financial institutions is an important policy area. By governance, we mean the running of the company by a controlling party; usually by managers, directors or shareholders. The 2008 financial crisis highlighted several failings in the governance of financial institutions. For example the failure to understand the wide reaching effect of their actions. In addition to this high level of remuneration, corporate greed and excessive risk taking have all been noted as factors in the collapse of several previously leading financial institutions. While these failures are varied, the key criticism of the current style of governance is an inability to learn from past mistakes, leading to the repeat of this cycle of failure.