Governance is more than regulation, which is its servant. Every public interest entity (‘PIE’), operating for the benefit of stakeholders and employees, functions within a regulatory structure that balances operational freedom, risk and cost. Finding and maintaining a lasting balance between these potentially competing elements is the province of good governance, and ensuring its effectiveness […]

RISING TO THE CHALLENGE ‘ACCOUNTANCY’ [JULY 2016] During the 2008 financial crisis several banks and other lending and deposit-taking institutions collapsed without a hint of warning from their auditors. Since that time pressure to improve the quality of annual audits has been building up, and by the time you read this, new EU Audit Regulations […]

  “Accountancy” February 2016 Hercules managed to clean out the Augean stables in a single day. We could do with a Hercules to clean up today’s money-grubbing world – although he may need a little longer: FIFA sleaze; athletics doping scandals; Volkswagen’s emissions-test cheating; drug manufacturer’s bribery charges; leading banks charged with mis-selling, rule-bending and […]

‘ACCOUNTANCY’ – JUNE 2016 The term “creative accounting” always carries the pejorative implication that accepted accounting rules are being manipulated to make trading results over a defined period appear to be better (never worse!) than warranted by facts. Perennial rule-tightening is like painting the Forth Bridge – the job is never done. Standards, the building […]

Actions arising from short-term expediency can be tempting. They may hide, but can never negate, the underlying principle. Obedience to the law is a principle that applies even when that law itself appears unprincipled. Google, Amazon, Facebook and others have for many years exploited jurisdictional tax-rate differentials to minimise their liabilities. The style of compliance […]

Unaccountable accounting began three decades ago. I know, because I was there when it happened. As a member of the UK Auditing Practices Committee (APC), I acted as its observer on the Accounting Standards Committee (ASC). Professional life was simpler then: ASC set the accounting standards, effectively UK GAAP, and APC set the auditing standards. […]

  How to gauge the effectiveness of audits? It is tempting to point to the growing scale of undetected irregularities and outright frauds and conclude that external audits are simply not fit for purpose. Yet there is no objective measure for assessing how much worse things would be without them. What if corporate propriety resided […]

  Legislators and bureaucrats seem incapable of distinguishing idealism from what is achievable in the real world. We saw a couple of months ago that Greece was granted a third bailout after promising its creditors a primary surplus of tax receipts over government spending for the foreseeable future. As expected, its economy then plunged straight […]

  How to gauge the effectiveness of audits? It is tempting to point to the growing scale of undetected irregularities and outright frauds and conclude that external audits are simply not fit for purpose. Yet there is no objective measure for assessing how much worse things would be without them. What if corporate propriety resided […]

  International accounting standard-setters have at last recognised the error of their ways and relented on the question of prudence, which they plan to re-instate as a fundamental accounting principle. Bank auditors will have to form an independent view on loan recoverability, rather than rely on the potentially biased judgements of management. A regime that […]