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Colin on billable hours
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What's in a name Des?
TS would like to congratulate Des Hudson for his move to the Law Society, which, according to the press release spiel, was ‘too tempting for him to turn down’ what with his background as a solicitor. And, after a chat with an ICAEW council member, who shall remain unnamed, TS is pretty sure what his first task could be at the venerable institution: a name change debate!
The reason being, after Des’ unhappiness at the ICAEW’s plans to change its moniker to the ICA he will surely have to take this into consideration at the Law Society due to the existence of a Law Society of Scotland.
As an equitable man, it would seem clear that the Law Society will be known as ‘of England and Wales’. In fairness the society does acknowledge the distinction between the two on its website, but one wonders if Des will refer to it as the ‘LSEW’ or just plain old Law Society?
See what Des has to look forward to at lawsociety.org.uk
Nick told to ‘get off my Land’
Having been chairman of Ernst & Young for 12 years, you would have thought that Nick Land, profiled on page 19 of this week's mag, could get his picture taken outside the firm’s headquarters.
Sad to say, Mr A Jobsworth (we think that’s what the name badge read) from the More London estate refused to allow the top man to have his picture taken unless he was on the nearby red bricks, and not on the greyer brick that More London owns. Unless you have permission, that is. The old ‘Do you know who I am?’ trick didn’t work either.
Chatting with Nick, TS discovered that he is something of a traditionalist. When some snazzy sandwiches came in mid-interview, he moaned, ‘whatever happened to cheese and pickle?’
TS recently discovered FRC chief Paul Boyle likes a crayfish sandwich while Land prefers a more traditional combination. If you know the sandwich tastes of other senior partners, send them to takingstock@accountancyage.com or post them below bit clicking on comments.
GT's (work/life) balancing books
If there is one thing TS has mastered over the years, it is achieving a good ‘work/life balance’ lots of life and as little work as possible. At mid-tier firm Grant Thornton however, it seems that the balance is not as generous on the life side.
At an awards ceremony held last year, the firm allegedly presented a prize for the ‘most chargeable hours in the UK’. The prize for the work junkie was, wait for it, a book on work/life balance. Now TS does not dispute the book’s power to encourage more time spent with the family and keeping 18-hour days to a minimum.
But if incentivising work/life balance was the aim, maybe something like a holiday to the Bahamas would have made more sense if not less cheeky.
Sir Geoff’s pot shot at Heskey
TS has always been a big believer in the ‘sport is like business’ mantra, so when Sir Geoff Hurst, he of insurance industry and 1966 World Cup winning hat-trick fame stood up to address last week’s Accountancy Age Conference, TS was all ears. Sir Geoff did not disappoint.
He regaled his rapt audience with some locker room banter before sharing the epiphany that teamwork was vital in both sport and business. Sir Geoff also indicated that a certain footballer by the name of Emile Heskey could be on his way into the accounting profession. ‘Heskey has scored five goals for England in 40-odd games. If I had had a scoring record like that I would have become an accountant,’ Sir Geoff said.
Altogether now: ‘Heskey for audit, Heskey for audit.’
Taxman’s green issues
The next time you get pestered to pay the climate change levy or some other environmental tax, you could remind the friendly local tax inspector about what HM Revenue & Customs is doing to combat environmental problems.
HMRC’s latest sustainable development report is out, and makes for some grim reading. A series of targets are listed, many of them ‘not met’. ‘Reduce carbon emissions by 12.5% by 2010-11: not on course, but work ongoing.’ ‘Increase energy efficiency by 15% by 2010-11: not on course, but work ongoing,’ the report says.
HMRC’s waste management is a particularly poor area, where it hasn’t even calculated its waste, let alone reduced it by its stated target. It also wants a strategy for ‘sustainable procurement’, whatever that might be (is it sustaining EDS’s fortunes perhaps?) Needless to say, it hasn’t been achieved.
OK, so some of its targets have been reached, but that’s not the point. The tax inspectors are not going to allow you to pay just a bit of the tax now are they?
More tax for the nanny state
Is the government’s £15m figure for the cost of the trusts clampdown entirely kosher?
TS only asks because Mike Warburton, of Grant Thornton, told us a story about how, when the IR35 row was raging a few years ago, he wrote an article ‘for a joke’, saying that nannies could get around the rules by exploiting a loophole.The wheels of government duly moved into action. ‘We’ll move to clamp down on any of those who do not pay their fair share,’ the press release no doubt said. Whether or not they were nannies or aggressive tax avoiders, or both, that is.
And how much revenue did the fearsome measure raise? £15m, of course. No-one was using the ‘scheme’, such as it was, and according to Mike nobody planned to, but it would raise £15m.
HMRC will have to forgive TS a measure of cynicism, but does the government just say £15m every time it doesn’t really know what it’s doing with a measure?
Prince Charles pips Mike Warburton in poll
Not the least of HMRC’s worries on the trusts issues should be the fact that Mike Warburton is the 34th most important person in Gloucestershire.
Mike has been given the lofty position by the Gloucestershire Echo, the well-respected local paper. Mike, of course, works in Cheltenham, so he qualifies, unlike TS, who would certainly have been rated more important if we had an office in the town. Prince Charles came top, Mike tells us, sounding ever so slightly miffed, not to have beaten the heir to the throne.
Mike’s citation reads: ‘Mike Warburton is the man credited with making tax interesting, with his regular appearances on BBC Radio Gloucestershire, Sky TV, BBC 5 Live and his column in The Citizen.’
All correct, though TS would quibble with one thing. Tax is always interesting.
Tax experts to lock horns
Book a ringside seat, pugilism-craving accountants. ACCA is holding a flat tax debate on 6 June this year.
Richard Murphy of the Tax Research limited, the Tax Justice Network and various other organisations, has been commissioned to produce research into the issue.
Murphy will be debating the issue with Richard Teather of Bournemouth University. That's the same Richard Teather who wrote to Accountancy Age in November last year on the launch of Oxford's centre for tax research.
'As soon as I saw Richard Murphy at the launch of Oxford's new centre for tax research, I knew that I only had to wait for the next issue of Accountancy Age to read his attack on it,' he wrote.
Murphy is a campaigner against avoidance who thinks miscreants should be chased to the end of the earth to recoup their ill-gotten gains. Teather is a free marketeer and proponent of a flat tax concept who conducts research on behalf of the Adam Smith Institute.
Light the blue touch paper - stand well back.
Is that a chainsaw in your bag...
Business flights can be a tedious affair, as TS is all too aware given the air miles we rack up jet-setting around the world to various accountancy shindigs. Checking in, first class lounge, free drinks, champagne, in flight movies, more drinks, it’s all such a big yawn.
So imagine our envy when ACCA supremo Christopher Forster relayed his latest airport adventure. Apparently he was queuing to go through an x-ray machine bound for Newcastle when the man in front was asked what was in a gift wrapped box. It took some persuasion, but the man finally confessed that it was a chainsaw.
Now, it’s TS’ view that chainsaws are not the most appropriate hand luggage and we are pleased to inform you that Forster felt exactly the same way. So, he safely deposited the shotgun that was in his own hand luggage in one of those plastic boxes. We made that last bit up, by the way.
Palios is up for the cup
When TS heard that former Football Association bigwig Mark Palios was to appear on our latest Insider Business Club webcast, we couldn’t help but pop down to the recording studio to ask him the question on everybody’s lips. And Mark was candid in his response.
England has the best opportunity ‘for a long time’ and ‘for some time to come’ of winning the World Cup in Germany this summer, he said. This was down to the age profile of the players and the tournament being played in a familiar and hospitable climate, he believed.
What came as more of a surprise is the admission that the role of the FA was not to ensure England won the competition but to ‘realise the full potential of the interest in this country in the game’. This would mean qualifying for major international tournaments every two years and reaching the quarter finals, apparently. Who says football was a game all about glory?
Perhaps this is why Sven feels confident in selecting Jermaine Jenas and Peter Crouch.
Divorce is just the job
TS has heard from some quarters that divorce can be the making of you. And without wishing to trivialise the sanctity of marriage, TS has sometimes considered getting married just so we can get divorced and finally make it as a front page reporter.
We have that backing of venture capital guru Jon Moulton on this one. Examining what makes a good chief exec, he found that those with one divorce under their belt outperformed those who had never gone though the divorce courts.
But there is a warning to those thinking of getting carried away as a route to further success. In corporate finance magazine Icon he said that once CEOs go beyond one divorce, the failure rate increases dramatically. Backing anybody with three divorces under their belt, which Jon has done five times, has seen him lose every penny, he said.
Perhaps TS should take heed and stick to quiet nights in with our faithful partner, Scruffy the dog, after all.
Shy man attacks 'publicity hungry' bean counters
An intriguing comment appeared in The Times last week on the continuing row over the government’s crackdown on trusts. A source, described as ‘close to the chancellor’ said: ‘The suggestion that these proposals will cause any hardship to anyone vulnerable is unadulterated garbage. All we have here is a group of publicity-hungry accountants and opportunistic Tories spreading irresponsible scare stories.’
‘Erm, yes,’ might be one response to the comment. TS has been speculating as to who might have said such a thing. It doesn’t sound like a Treasury official. Treasury types appear to not have the surest grasp of the issue, but appreciate that it is a sensitive one.
TS has a few names in mind. Anyone who cares to speculate can join the debate by posting a comment below.
Job Club beckons for accountants
Having studied the figures from the latest salary survey in this week's mag, TS can only conclude that our readers are a bunch of pessimists. Eighties clothing may once again be the fashion for those strolling down Carnaby Street but the world of business shows no sign of a resurgence of the old Gordon Gecko-style aggression in the career stakes.
About two-thirds of you expect a pay rise of less than 10%, with most of those anticipating little more than inflation. Worse still, 5% of you expect to be unemployed this time next year. TS could accept this if it was people coming up to retirement age, but most were entering the prime of their career. Either their business is in trouble or these people are living in constant fear of being found out as rubbish at their jobs, TS understands.
Colin's fight club
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Let’s get ready to rumble
TS has always enjoyed the spectacle that ensues when the Big Four get competitive, but it has never really reached the levels that would inspire Hollywood blockbusters. But that is not to say that some in the profession don’t while away their time dreaming up spectacular hypothetical Big Four battles.
TS was dining with a Deloitte partner last week, who was bullish on the firm’s plans to grow revenue to £2bn in two years. The partner had no doubt that Deloitte head John Connolly had the tenacity to hit the revenue target, and used a unique metaphor to express his faith in Connolly’s prowess.
‘If you took the senior partners of the Big Four firms and put them in a basement with some baseball bats, the man to come out would be John Connolly.’
TS never thought that it would see the day when accountants would form their very own version of Fight Club with weapons.
JGJ’s brush with make-up
TS was loitering with intent in KPMG’s Salisbury Square lobby the other day when we happened to bump into none other than JGJ. That’s John Griffith-Jones for those not in the know about the new man’s nickname.
JGJ was having a spot of make-up applied by what we suspect was the KPMG visual effects studio while donning a purple jacket for, at least in TS’ eyes, a very unusual photo. ‘It’s for charity’, TS was told, after gawping in slightly amazed fashion at the firm’s senior partner-elect.
What was he up to, we wonder? And did he like being made up? TS has heard some members of the profession get very excited about make-up. John Whiting told TS recently that colleagues always asked him whether or not he puts on a bit of slap for his television experiences.
Any suggestions that senior members of the profession are still somewhat obsessed with its mother, mummy’s make-up set and generally getting dressed up and looking silly, would be no doubt strenuously denied.
Brown’s out of touch with women
It was with some excitement that TS stumbled into a Treasury select committee meeting last week, with chancellor Gordon Brown facing a grilling over his Budget. After all, we hadn’t had a good long kip for a while and listening to the future PM quoting economic figures for a few hours was guaranteed to send us off to the land of nod.
But TS was made to prick up its ears at one stage when Gordy was asked about the Budget’s effects on women.
Defending the government’s record on women’s issues, he piped up with this little gem, saying that women were ‘increasingly dominating’ the accounting and financial services professions.
TS can say it was a little surprised and only just refrained from blurting out something very inappropriate in the chancellor’s general direction. A quick look at Accountancy Age’s last salary survey shows that the majority of the top jobs in business and practice are still held by men. We would be very surprised if next week’s salary survey results show a huge change.
Has HMRC started Pengate?
Last week’s Digita annual conference in Stratford-upon-Avon had the potential to go off like a Big Four senior partner punch-up, after HM Revenue & Customs’ Julian Hatt was lined up to talk about online services just after the announcement on shifting self assessment deadlines.
No physical punches were thrown, however Julian was quick to point out that the 200 accountants attending his seminars should ‘not shoot the messenger’. One attendee was so vocal in his protestations that Julian was heard to ask if it was an intrepid reporter from Accountancy Age.
In a gesture of goodwill, seminar attendees were offered an HMRC USB memory stick pen, but unfortunately they weren’t actually brought to the event. Details were taken, and dozens of accountants are awaiting their pens in the post. TS has therefore decided to instigate a ‘Penwatch’ so Let TS know if you have received your pen as promised.
A transparent tax framework?
There have been some unkind suggestions emerging that the Hundred Group has been a little less than transparent over the launch of its report into the Total Tax Contribution Framework.
Despite saying it would have a website featuring the report up and running within a week of release, the site has still not reached t’internet, and those interested in looking at the Group’s methodology are currently unable to, unless they personally request a copy of the report. The website will be out ‘in a few weeks,’ a spokesman says.
TS does not wish to join those saying that this rather runs counter to the aim of developing a total tax concept, namely to increase the transparency of company tax reporting. We note only that some are saying so, and that we think the nice people at Prudential, tasked with presenting the report, may have had other things on their minds in recent weeks.
Kroll's cold snap
TS has a begrudging admiration for the recovery experts at Kroll. They always seem to be acting glamorous and doing something just a little bit different. So it comes as no surprise that when they undertake management training, they do it with a twist.
To test the mettle of their staff, Kroll Corporate Finance has taken to sending employees to the end of the Earth, Antarctica to be precise, to 'inspire people to create extraordinary results in preserving our environment through leadership, teamwork and personal development'. So Kroll says anyway. Just sounds cold to us.
Del Huse, a director in Kroll’s Corporate Finance practice spent three weeks on the '2041 Inspire Antarctic Expedition' led by Robert Swan, the first man to walk unassisted to both poles.
In Antarctica, Del participated in a leadership training programme delivered by Robert, coaching the expedition team on how to manage team performance in extreme conditions and circumstances.
TS would imagine that such a test would be 'Leadership on the ledge', but why be picky?
Still, Kroll staff did learn something out there. Apparently the Antarctic ice sheet is four miles thick in places, Antarctica is the driest continent on earth, and no country has ownership of the continent – it is currently protected by treaty which expires in 2041.
Ownership issues, very important in corporate restructuring work, TS thought despairingly.
International Accounting Sickness Board
Calling up for some juicy gossip on the standards front, TS was initially delighted to hear the Tom Seidenstein, director of operations at the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation had just departed on paternity leave, having become the father of a little boy over the weekend.
But then we became slightly perturbed to find out that hardly anyone else was available for a chat, as seemingly most of the office had come down with a stomach bug. TS was told that a t least 11 had gone down in the office so far.
Given the amount of travel these guys have to endure in the name of international standards, perhaps it is not surprising that they would be conduits for every bug and virus going. TS just hopes that the IASB aren't the first to bring bird flu to the UK.
More worryingly, one of our colleagues told us they were at the IASB towards the end of last week. Frankly, if we get ill, we may consider legal action.
