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Don’t ignore the draft

aksaroya —  22 May 2013 — Leave a comment

By Barry Cooper, ACCA president

Engaging in the IIRC’s consultation is vital in developing the integrated reporting framework.

Barry Cooper-0513

It has always been a source of pride to me that ACCA has been at the forefront of developments within the accountancy profession – the move to ensuring that our syllabus was based on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) being just one.

Now ACCA is once again demonstrating its pioneering credentials by not only being one of the first adopters of integrated reporting (IR) – having produced our most recent annual report to IR principles – but also by calling for the business community, companies and investors alike to ensure they help shape the future of IR.

We have urged these groups to respond to the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) consultation draft on the integrated reporting framework to help develop a new corporate reporting model. This will enable organisations to communicate their activities more effectively and provide clear information to stakeholders.

In my meetings with members, employers and tuition providers, many have commented favourably on our first annual report produced along IR lines – which enabled our stakeholders to see the bigger picture brought together in what is hopefully an easily digested document. Our next report will be another step along the IR route.

But this initiative is not only an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and innovation in the accountancy profession. It is also critical that those you advise play their part in helping to shape the future of integrated reporting, by looking at issues and challenges which can be addressed now and which ensure that the IIRC gets the full picture.

You have a critical role to play, and I urge you and your companies to engage in the consultation process.

This post first appeared in Accounting and Business magazine, May 2013

In ACCA, Barry Cooper, Corporate reporting, IFRS, IIRC, Integrated reporting
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Capital quandary

aksaroya —  20 May 2013 — Leave a comment

By Manos Schizas, economic analyst at ACCA

Only a fraction of the world’s SMEs are funded by public equity. ACCA considers whether the world’s capital markets can do more for small issuers.

SME capital market

Xavier Rolet, CEO of the London Stock Exchange Group, has been making the rounds recently, drumming up support for Europe’s SMEs as the most reliable job creators in the region. He’s right, of course, in identifying the sector as a powerful engine of employment, but can the capital markets supply SMEs’ funding needs?

The dotcom boom of the late 1990s ended badly – or so I was taught in university. But more than a decade later it seems to me that it was a fantastically benign episode compared to the credit bubble that followed it. Though it had to end some time, it was the dotcom era that made today’s digital economy possible, bequeathing a digital and social infrastructure that we couldn’t live without today.

But perhaps the period’s most lasting legacy may be the stereotype of the twentysomething internet billionaire: starting a game-changing business in his or her basement, then taking it public a few years later, still in jeans, as the prospectus presented to the world. It’s a great story, but also a desperately rare one.

To this day, only a very small percentage of the world’s SMEs are funded by public equity. The figure varies by country but is typically in the low single digits. Because the total population of SMEs is so massive, this relatively small share still means that micro-caps and small caps (with a market capitalisation of less than $65m and $200m respectively) made up 64% of the world’s listed companies in 2011. But they accounted for only 14% of individual stock market trades and 4% of share trading volume, according to figures from the World Federation of Exchanges.

Illiquidity is a market-killer. It scares away investors looking for reliable exit opportunities as much as it does entrepreneurs looking for fair valuation. It also endangers the social mission of markets. Stock exchanges serve society by channelling funds to productive investment through price discover; this however means that liquidity is most crucial in those segments of the market in which issuers most critical future finance needs are still ahead of them.

Appropriately a recent report by UK think tank Centre Forum singled out stamp duty on sales of shares for criticism as an effective tax on liquidity. In the era of high frequency trading, some policymakers may even welcome this outcome. But even if there is such a thing as excess liquidity in capital markets – which is subject to fierce debate – when it comes to small listings, there is no liquidity to waste, no froth to skim.

Governments have used other tax incentives extensively to promote equity finance; after all the interest on debt is tax-deductible, which creates an uneven playing field. Emerging markets, from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, to frontiers such as Cambodia, offer substantial tax breaks to listed firms, subject to clawbacks, as long as they remain listed for some years. Many governments also extend these breaks to investors. In the UK, for example, investments in the AIM exchange are now eligible for inclusion in stocks and shares ISAs.

While tax relief may encourage investors to hold onto more of their gains, the ears of tax and wealth advisers everywhere also prick up at the mere mention of a tax incentive. Tax relief may increase returns, but it is only one side of the equation. Small issuers are seen as riskier – and not without cause. Students of accounting are routinely taught from seminal studies that use business size is a proxy for risk. The lack of analyst following compounds this problem: analysts’ incentives are to generate recommendations for the sell-side and micro-caps simply cannot generate enough sales to justify their time. It is not impossible to develop alternatives, but they won’t come for free either.

Back in the UK, Centre Forum correctly identified the need for a new listing culture in which all stakeholders collaborate to encourage the financing of SMEs through public equity. Ironically, this is precisely the reality in less developed markets – where government, business associations, exchanges and the accountancy profession work hand in hand to groom prospective issuers.

Why not take a leaf out of their book? After all, secondary boards aimed at SMEs, however established the main exchange boards they are allied to, are perpetually in frontier market territory.

Meanwhile, the tiny but rapidly growing crowdfunding industry, which allows retail investors to put small amounts of equity towards promising start-ups, could introduce a whole new generation of potential investors to the concepts and risks of equity investment. Policymakers and exchanges have yet to see the link between crowdfunding and the capital markets, but they should.

For more information read Protecting stakeholder interests in SME companies: good practice adopting and promoting e-invoicing in the EU and The rise of capital markets in emerging and frontier economies.

This article first appeared in Accounting and Business magazine small business special edition, May edition, 2013.

In ACCA, Access to finance, capital markets, Manos Schizas, SMEs, Uncategorized , , ,
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Off the hook

aksaroya —  17 May 2013 — Leave a comment

Peter Williams, accountant and journalist, explores the contrast between the impassioned scapegoating of the ratings agencies during the onset of the financial crisis with the meek acceptance of the recent UK sovereign downgrade.

credit-rating

Credit-rating agencies have proven remarkably capable of withstanding the opprobrium of politicians. At the start of the financial crisis, politicians pilloried the agencies, and warned of dire consequences for their part in the crisis. But the tough talk has barely touched the work and the output of the rating agencies.

Perhaps inevitably, the discomfort of a UK sovereign downgrade from its coveted AAA status by the rating agencies has been seen partly through the prism of the political damage inflicted on UK chancellor George Osborne. But he is not alone: the UK has merely followed in the footsteps of the US and France in 2011 and 2012. A few weeks before Moody’s delivered its ratings verdict on the UK economy – and some would say on the chancellor’s stewardship – European politicians delivered theirs on how rating agencies should act in future. Those judgements could hardly have been more different.

The new EU rating agency rules amount to little more than an invitation to carry on as before. The final package aims to reduce the over reliance on ratings and make it easier to sue the agencies if they are judged to have made errors when, for example, ranking the creditworthiness of debt. In particular, the agencies will have to be more transparent when they are rating sovereigns, respect timing rules on sovereign ratings and justify the timing of publication of unsolicited ratings of sovereign debt. The politicians’ stance softened markedly during negotiations with the agencies. The proposal for a state-funded agency was quietly shelved. It is a far cry from the blood and thunder that politicians were threatening back when the financial crisis was still raw and unfolding. The mood then was summed up by US politician Henry Waxman, who declared: ‘The story of the credit-rating agency is a story of colossal failure.’ The agencies’ failure to spot the problem with securities had broken the bond of trust and put the entire global financial system at risk. They were told to expect a radical overhaul, perhaps an entirely new system. The House of Lords report into the agencies in July 2011 was tellingly entitled Sovereign Credit Ratings:shooting the messenger?

Shooting the Messenger?

The four-month inquiry criticised the agencies’ role in the 2008 banking collapse but concluded its EU sovereign downgrades ‘merely reflected the seriousness of the problems in some member states’. The politicians’ overall view on the agencies? They should learn from their past failure to spot emerging risks. Well, yes. A little later, at the height of the Eurozone crisis in August 2011, one leading politician agreed with the Lords’ stance: ‘Credit-rating agencies, however imperfect, are trying to give market investors some idea of the creditworthiness of economies and businesses. They did not cause this.’ Such a view is perfectly reflected in the light-touch ratings agency regulatory regime now swinging into operation. The politician who struck the conciliatory note of reality? Yes, you guessed it: he of the recent credit downgrade, UK chancellor George Osborne.

This article first appeared in Accounting and Business magazine, UK edition, April 2013

In Economy, Uncategorized
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The future is integrated

aksaroya —  13 May 2013 — Leave a comment

Liz Hughes, head of ACCA Ireland, on the value of a new approach to financial reporting

integrated

The term “integrated reporting” may not yet be a part of your current accountancy vocabulary but the likelihood is that it will become a standard feature of reporting practices in the near future. Its move to prominence is being driven by three related developments.

Firstly, increased recognition that the traditional use of the financial statement as the sole measure of a company’s health and wellbeing can no longer go unquestioned. Secondly, the widespread introduction into entities’ reporting practices of a number of specialist reports, for example, reports on corporate governance policies and practices. Finally, and more generally, the steady increase in company disclosure requirements, which has led to corporate annual reports becoming extremely lengthy documents, sometimes running to hundreds of pages. This trend, while understandable, is contrary to the goal of achieving transparency in reporting practices.

There is now a developing body of opinion that we need to promote a new approach to corporate reporting, one that brings together all the material factors impacting on an entity’s standing and performance, and communicates them in a coherent ‘integrated’ way. Crucially, it is argued that an entity needs to weave these different strands of information into a coherent narrative that is driven an explanation of its strategy, i.e. plans it has to achieve its business objectives. The essence of this new concept then, is not to add to the proliferation of reported information but to identify the factors that are most material to a full explanation of what a reporting company is trying to achieve, and to make sure that a full and rounded explanation is conveyed.

The concept is now being taken forward by the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), a new body based in London that is enjoying widespread support from business, the profession and regulators. IIRC is currently developing a framework to guide companies in how they should go about producing integrated reports, through a consultation paper on this framework. Depending on the feedback received, a final version will follow by the end of 2013. More information can be obtained at www.theiirc.org

This article first appeared in Accounting and Business, Ireland edition, April 2013

In IIRC, Uncategorized
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All change at the top

aksaroya —  10 May 2013 — Leave a comment

As a new CFO takes the helm at TCS, Cesar Bacani, editor-in-chief of CFO Innovation Asia, looks back at how the finance function has transformed and considers the wisdom that outgoing chiefs can pass on to younger colleagues.

IT Consultancy

Before I interviewed S Mahalingam, until recently the CFO of global IT services and business process outsourcing giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), I thought he had been in finance for 42 years. He set me straight. Although a chartered accountant, Maha, as he is known, had been in almost all functions except finance in 33 of his 42 years with the Tata Group.

‘I used to write [software] programmes, develop systems, do marketing,’ he said ‘I opened the international offices in the UK and the US. Basically, I have done almost all of the functions – I looked after project delivery management, I looked after HR and training.’

It was a career path that he feels made him a much better CFO when he finally headed finance. ‘I would rate that as the biggest part of it,’ said Maha.

‘Had I been a backroom person [in traditional finance], I think I would not have been able to counsel anyone. I would have reacted to decisions, rather than being a part of [decision-making].’

Not that he had no qualms about switching over to finance; things had changed so much since he qualified. ‘I don’t think anyone was called a chief financial officer,’ he recalled, ‘The finance manager and CFO as a distinct role really came in the 1980s and 1990s.’

‘I was a little worried as to whether I would have the capability to do the accounting,’ he added. And then I realised that the function has moved on far beyond that’ — something that’s not news for more and more of his peers today.

Standards and processes have become more structured and there are things like automation, straight-through processing, outsourcing and shared service centres — all of which Maha harnessed to free finance to focus more on value-added work. For, as the CFO found out, finance’s remit has expanded in all directions.

`You have to really work with the chief executive, to give the relevant drivers for running the business and making sure that you are not only helping in the planning process but also in measuring [performance],’ he said.

Not that the core of finance has been neglected at TCS.

‘Accounting is an expertise function,’ Maha explained, ‘My challenge in the last 10 years has been to create this expertise, in the same way that a specialist structure was also created around global taxation’ (TCS has 58 offices around the world).

I interviewed Maha after he was honoured as CFO Innovation Asia’s CFO of the Year in 2012. He retired on his 65th birthday in February but years before he had already started grooming a successor in Rajesh Gopinathan. An engineer with an MBA degree, Gopinathan was on the business side when Maha brought him over to finance.

`He is not a chartered accountant,’ said the new CFO’s mentor.

The way things are going, though, it seems that even a non-accountant can take the financial reins — provided that he or she is backed by the expertise of accountants, tax experts, treasurers and other specialists.

This article first appeared in Accounting and Business, China edition, April 2013

In ACCA, CFO, Finance Transformation
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