Smith faulted senior leadership, including the present CEO and president, for the decline of the firm’s moral fiber and for having lost a culture of integrity, trust, pride, and honesty Instead, “The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today if you make enough money for the firm and are not currently an ax murderer you will be promoted into a position of influence, Smith ended his letter with the hope that his resignation would be a wake-up call for the board of directors and warning them that they will not survive if they lose the trust of their clients he concluded by advising them to weed out the morally bankrupt people no matter how much money they make for the firm and get the culture right again so people want to work here for the right reasons people who care only about making money will not sustain this firm-or the trust of its clients-for very much longer