PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND MEDIA RELATIONS BLOG - Clive Booth

2010 Live Budget Blog from ACCA

Hello, and welcome to ACCA's live blog for the UK's 2010 Budget.

The chancellor will be making his Budget statement at 1230 GMT on Wednesday and our live blog will begin at 1200 GMT. Providing us with their thoughts and analysis of what the chancellor is announcing are: ACCA's head of tax, Chas Roy-Chowdhury; our SME policy adviser, Manos Schizas; and our technical advisory team, headed by Glenn Collins.

Updates will appear in the comments section of the blog, so make sure you regularly update the page. You can follow the comments section in an RSS feed too by clicking on the orange button below.

Is there anything left to be said about sustainability?

ACCA hosts a public debate in London on 26 March at which the great and the good will discuss how to overcome the barriers for organisations to be environmentally sustainable and financially viable.
 
Two pieces of research to be published on the day examines organisations that have put ecological sustainability at the core of their mission, and how they are modifying business processes in response to the demands of the sustainable development agenda. Pursuing Environmental Sustainability: A Survey of Organisations That Put the Environment First also explores the barriers these organisations face in seeking to operate in an ecologically sustainable manner.
 
Key Issues in Sustainability Assurance considers sustainable assurance reporting. Sustainability assurance reports are viewed differently by different people, who often have different views and needs when looking at these reports. But their future usefulness cannot be ignored and there remains a place for assurance reports in the world of sustainability.
 
To mark the publication as well of Pursuing Environmental Sustainability: A Survey of Organisations That Put the Environment First, ACCA is looking forward to hearing from the following panellists:

• Jessica Fries, project director, The Prince of Wales Accounting for Sustainability Project
• John Lelliot, director of finance and information services, The Crown Estate
• Mark Line, executive chairman, Two Tomorrows
• Barney Rhys-Jones, managing director, Good Energy
• Professor Jan Bebbington and Nick Barter, University of St Andrews
• Professor David Owen, University of Nottingham
• Steve Priddy, director of technical policy and research, ACCA (chair)

To attend this free event, please email extevents@accaglobal.com to reserve your place.
 
Friday 26 March 2010  

• 4.30pm-5pm - Registration
• 5pm-6.05pm - Speaker panel
• 6.05pm-6.45pm - Q and A
• 6.50pm-7.30pm - Reception  

Venue
ACCA, 29 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3EE (map) 

Women in the boardroom

In 'Skirting the issue' in this week's Schumpter business column in the Economist, the effect of imposing women onto boardrooms is examined and concludes this tackles a symptom of discrimination, not the cause.
 
Women hold fewer than 15% of positions on boards in most countries, except in Scandinavia and Norway in particular where in 2005 the government gave listed companies two years to increase the proportion by 40% or risk closure. Cranfield University produce a yearly report of women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies, which you can find here.
 
One potential downside to such engineering of social justice was that Norwegian boards might suffer from the loss of corporate experience that the men being replaced would leave. While the wheels haven't dropped off in Scandinavia, it has now become increasingly difficult for these countries to maintain the balance on the boards because the pool of female candidates has been drained.
 
Schumpter concludes that the best way to increase the number of women on boards is to ensure that more women gain the right experience further down the corporate hierarchy. For instance, training as a chartered certified accountant would be one good step onto that corporate ladder for many women.
 
But then ACCA would agree with that, wouldn't we?

Why Iceland is oh so quiet

For a country of only 320,000 people (175th in the world population rankings and about the same size as Leicester in the UK), Iceland has consistently punched well above its weight with its impact on world culture.

For fans of avant garde music, blonde footballers, fish-based naval stand-offs, ominous quiz music, and frozen food, the world would be a very different place without the volcanic Atlantic island.

Depending on your view of frozen food, football, or Björk, the swan-wearing songstress, the absence of Iceland would presumably be a bad thing; for the British and Dutch finance ministries though, Iceland and its 320,000 citizens are an unwanted £3.3bn headache.

After the Icelandic banking industry collapsed in 2008, the British and Dutch governments found themselves refunding their citizens who had just lost their savings. Since then, the British and the Dutch have been trying to get the money back (Iceland has already promised to repay most of the money, the sticking point is the terms and conditions).

The Icelanders have understandably taken a dim view of the speed at which they are being asked to repay the £3.3bn - given that it was Icelandic-based banks that lost the money rather than the Icelanders themselves - and 93% of them rejected the current repayment plan in a referendum over the weekend. As The Economist notes though, this show of people power could prove costly as a £3bn IMF loan is contingent on the country repaying its debts.

The question in Iceland is a repeat of the problem faced by the UK two years ago: whether or not it's right for taxpayers to bailout failing/failed private banks. The answer to this question is undoubtedly ‘yes' - the economic crisis would have been worse without bailouts - but really the question is one that shouldn't have been asked in the first place. The financial sector messed up, big time.

In two papers, The Future of Financial Regulation and its update, ACCA's policy team has looked at ways to prevent taxpayers being once more put in a position where they have no choice but to clean up the messes of a risk-ignorant financial sector. (The Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation has an excellent edition of its e-zine on regulation and the financial crisis too. Read it here).

The key points from the papers include: the need for a review of the purpose and structure of regulation; the need to consider separating wholesale and retail banking; the need for an introduction of an ethics-based corporate culture to financial institutions; the need for a review of corporate governance (particularly the role of non-executive directors); improved accountability, audit, and remuneration structures; and the need for international regulatory authorities to agree on, and enforce, a definition of optimal capital levels for the major retail banks.

So far, the British taxpayers have had to stump up for losses made by banks in both the UK and Iceland. They shouldn't have to bear the same burden again.