ABSTRACT
Global PR firms and associations have done much to position trust as a pressing agenda for public relations. This agenda has been precisely tailored to establish a need, then offer a solution to global business in an era when trust is portrayed as a crisis, while public trust has never seemed more urgent or consequential (Rottger and Voss 2008, Arthur W. Page Society 2009). Before economies grew into complex, globalised systems, people did business with people they knew and trust was given in situations they could monitor. Today, consumers are often called upon to put their trust in corporations via faceless, automated and electronic transactions (Giddens 1990). Abstract trust in financial systems has characterised the era of financialisation, during which time financial markets have grown in significance as a result of market deregulation and intensified financial and technological innovation.
