Welcome to the first of my “Friday round-ups”, a weekly blog of blogs, bringing you a quick summary of some of the week’s big accountancy stories as well as some information about what ACCA has been up to over the last seven days.
Dominating the accountancy headlines this week, as it has done for a while, is the ongoing battle to converge global accounting standards. The debate was brought to the fore (once again) by a disagreement between the Chiefs of PwC and Deloitte over loan loss accounting provisions.
Further doubt was cast over the future of convergence on Tuesday, when the IASB said that convergence with its US counterpart the FASB was no longer “an objective in itself”. Our Head of Public Affairs, Veena Hudson, has blogged on the tortuous convergence process, while our President, Brendan Murtagh, has had a look at the UK’s ASB GAAP consultation exercise.
Accountancy itself came under scrutiny in the Evening Standard when City Editor Anthony Hilton noted that the profession had escaped the criticism levelled at bankers and economists in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In response, ACCA wrote to the Standard explaining that the role of auditing in business needed to evolve post-crisis, with effective audits underpinning the confidence required for a return to strong economic growth.
This week, UK inflation rose to 3.5% and Barclays’ announced a whopping 92% leap in profits as it continued its post-crisis recovery (albeit, as commented by Robert Peston, while retaining earnings which could be used for the lending which the economy desperately needs). Brendan took a timely look at what accountants can do for small businesses to help them out of recession while our blogging accountant, Simon Cox, looked at some of the challenges faced by small businesses, such as unreasonable or erroneous demands from the taxman, and the benefits of online & traditional networking.
My colleagues and I have also been busy online. Nick Cosgrove spent last Thursday evening live tweeting from an ACCA/KPMG climate change debate (which covered the opportunities for businesses in the green economy, the role which the public and private sectors should play in combating climate change, and the problem of balancing business and environmental needs), while I shamelessly promoted ACCA’s presence on social media and discussed the European Commission’s consultation on the interconnection of business registers.
Looking beyond the immediate realm of accountancy, Veena continued her series on the UK’s upcoming General Election, this week focusing on the post-election economy and the outlook for the public sector.
That’s all for this week, but this Friday round-up will become a regular feature and, as with all our blogs, please feel free to leave comments and feedback.
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Posted by: Small Business Bookkeeping | 24 February 2010 at 07:12