Ethics at banks and investment funds

Someone who has recently completed his PhD on a topic related with this broad field writes to me as follows:

"Though I was able to graduate, the story of my dissertation is largely the story of research that never took place.... I approached (more than two dozen) banks and investment funds with a proposal to do ethics related research, and was consistently turned down. In my dissertation defense, I compared myself to a fly trying to get through a glass windowpane, (but) the financial world remained forever on the other side."

The parentheses above are mine.

As far as I can work out, his research started at the height of the boom, and he persisted with his efforts to do the research till well after the bust.

Was the refusal of the banks and funds to co-operate with the research mere cussedness, or did the banks and funds know that they should not be letting any research get done on the ethics in their companies? Sphere: Related Content