As high-profile corporate abuses have unfolded, one after the other, most boards have become preoccupied with reassessing their responsibilities and implementing the new accounting rules.

FORBES: A New Era In Corporate Governance

Major Japanese companies have, historically, been reluctant to bring outsiders into the boardroom, a pattern that many corporate-governance experts have said has led to insular management and a number of high-profile corporate scandals in recent years.

WSJ: Toyota Overhauls Management

The tougher rules in Switzerland have struck a chord with a Swiss public wearied by a string of high-profile corporate mishaps, and had looked likely to pass since news broke two weeks ago that the Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis planned to give its departing chairman a SFr72m pay-off, even though the plans were subsequently dropped.

CNN: Swiss vote for executive pay curbs

Critics have accused business schools of culpability in the many high-profile lapses of corporate ethics in recent years, and Dean Plowman said studying the schools' mindfulness could indicate whether they are capable of self-correction.

WSJ: Business Skills and Buddhist Mindfulness

The first of these to strike a deal was Renaissance Capital, a high-profile western-style investment bank with a strong corporate and international client base.

ECONOMIST: Russian finance

Corporate espionage is not just the stuff of high-profile, high-intrigue cross border spying.

FORBES: Your Social Media Superstar is Giving Away the Company Farm

High-profile allegations of graft could also affect banks: a handful of corporate customers, from telecoms firms to miners, are implicated in scandals, and if they end up being clobbered by the authorities, their creditworthiness could be hit.

ECONOMIST: Does India have a bad-debt problem?

But the cost-cutting focus is now expanding to deal makers and corporate advisers that have remained among Wall Street's most high-profile professionals even as their contributions to banks' bottom line has been dwarfed by traders.

WSJ: Wall Street Gets Lean

Anonymous and its offshoot, Lulz Security, have been linked to a number of high-profile computer attacks and crimes, including many that were meant to embarrass governments, federal agencies and corporate giants.

WSJ: LA Times hack: Security breach or harmless prank?

But high-profile economists are hard to find, as is evidenced by the fact that so few of them become corporate executives.

FORBES: Predicting Who Will Replace Larry Summers