APRIL 2017 – ‘ACCOUNTANCY’ MAGAZINE The impediment of accounting clutter Management accounts have never been subjected to the rigorous straightjacket of regulatory standards because people running businesses base their internal accounting systems on utility, or relevance to their needs. In an ideal world, users of published financial statements would be consulted on utility before involving […]

‘ACCOUNTANCY’ – JANUARY 2017 MONETARY SANCTIONS? USELESS ON THEIR OWN Unfortunately for our profession, the ‘Big 4’ label may equally be taken to refer to HSBC, RBS, Lloyds and Barclays, which between them have incurred an eye-watering £50 billion in fines and lawsuits since the financial crisis began ten years ago. Their misdemeanours relate mainly […]

Explaining boardroom mega-bucks The basic pay of most employees is governed by industrial and professional norms, and is relatively stable over time when so-called “inflation” adjustments are factored in. Almost unbelievably, today’s average hourly wage has the same buying power as it did 45 years ago! By contrast, executive remuneration in the largest companies is […]

February 2017 “ACCOUNTANCY” Legitimising corrupt practices In last month’s column I commented on the huge fines levied on financial institutions guilty of violating securities laws, noting that natural justice would be better served if these vast penalties were applied to compensate victims, rather than enriching culprits’ lawyers – while leaving the transgressors’ obscene levels of […]

News media gloat over the eye-watering levels of retribution (in the form of fines and penalties) finally being meted out to aberrant banks found guilty of having violated securities laws leading up to the last financial crash. I find it astonishing, firstly, that it has taken close to 10 years to identify, formulate and punish […]

This letter and my article in June 2016 “Accountancy” was followed by the interesting correspondence referred to in my posting of 10th December 2016.   Sir Fat-Cat Pay – the cause On July 11 you published an article by Theresa May in which she highlighted the anomaly of the FTSE trading at the same level […]

Emile, Is there not a difficult practical issue here? There has been an outcry about the huge pay packet of Caros Ghosn at the head of Renault and its Japanese arm, Nissan. They calculate how many years it would take a production line worker to own what Ghosn gets in a day. How can he […]

December 2016 “ACCOUNTANCY” Excessive regulation is the enemy of transparency Government departments, lacking the relevant expertise themselves, often grant extensive powers to professional bodies responsible for overseeing the activities of their members. The chief problem with this growth of administrative (compared with constitutional) law is accountability. Given such powers, professional bodies hardly expect to be […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES – 6 A QUESTION OF ECONOMIC CALCULATION When I came home from my golf game last Tuesday I found my 13 year-old grandson Michael sprawled on my office carpet reading an article I had written in “Accountancy” Magazine. He said “Grandpa, I agree with everything you write, but I just don’t understand this […]

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 5 “Death by 1,000 cuts” This was the name given to the ancient Chinese method of torture and execution. It survives today as the role model for central bankers whose insidious cuts – in interest rates – are relentlessly destroying the life-blood of savings throughout the world. Collateral damage caused by this folly […]