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Colin on Desert Island Discs
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Wind beneath Digby
TS is in no doubt over the business credentials of outgoing CBI head honcho and incoming Deloitte man Sir Digby Jones, but having listened to his choices on Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 over the weekend it did raise a few questions. While there are a few rousing selections, such as Jerusalem and Elgar’s Nimrod, some of his others were a bit more, shall we say, interesting.
On Digby’s castaway list were Younger than springtime from the musical South Pacific, Hello again by Neil Diamond, George Benson singing In your eyes, Tina Turner’s legendary The best, and TS’ particular favourite (Everything I do) I do it for you by Bryan Adams.
But to top the list off, Digby chose the classic weepy power ballad Wind beneath my wings by Bette Midler. Do you get the feeling that beneath that tough business exterior our Digby is just a soppy old romantic? Digby, did TS ever tell you you’re our hero?
Shell man joins lefty love-in
TS would love to have been a fly on the wall at last week’s lunch in honour of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator/popular hero being feted by Ken Livingstone & co. The event was something of a lefty love-in, with Ken and others saying how wonderful it was that Hugo was standing up to the US, and what an all-round good egg he must be.
TS doesn’t deign to take a view on such matters, but was intrigued to see that Peter Voser, CFO of Shell, was on the guestlist.
Shell clearly has some pretty big stakes in Venezuelan oil, but at the same time it makes you wonder. What does a representative of global capitalism, the beancounter responsible for counting Shell’s almighty 13 billion beans of profits (in pounds sterling) last year, have to say to a man who is on record as saying that ‘capitalism is savagery’ and that it is also the cause of natural disasters around the world?
Dawn sees red at tax meeting
A note to all those going for meetings with ‘red’ Dawn Primarolo: don’t bother making witty cracks about the efficient, or otherwise, operation of the tax credits system.
Discussing measures to clamp down on the multi-billion pound ‘missing trader intra-community’ VAT fraud in the finance bill committee debate, the paymaster general explained that the system was susceptible to fraud partly because ‘the tax administration is so fantastically efficient at repaying VAT promptly’.
Tory wag David Gauke quickly piped up: ‘If the problem is the over-efficient and rapid repayment of VAT, has the paymaster general considered giving it to the tax credits team?’
‘Oh dear,’ snapped Primarolo, ‘I thought we were having a grown-up discussion. I am not going to answer the honourable gentleman's questions if he is going to be so unpleasant.’
A bit of a sense of humour failure there, TS feels.
We knew it was Gunner happen again
So, Barcelona won the Champions League, Thierry Henry fluffed a few good opportunities to bring the Cup home and hundreds of accountants in London left dining halls early to watch it all happen. It would seem that those who attended the annual dinners of the ICAEW and CIPFA did rush off with some enthusiasm to watch events unfolding in Paris, much the same as happenings at last year’s ICAEW’s bash, which also clashed with club football’s showpiece event.
Luckily for the respective institutes, the Gunners did not follow Liverpool’s example and comeback from 3-0 down at half-time forcing extra time and penalties, so the guest speakers still had an audience to address. Still, let’s hope that the organisers of next year’s annual dinners have a peek at the Champions League fixture list before booking out the Grosvenor.
The art of promotion
Peter Wyman is an outstanding achiever, according to the ICAEW, but TS reckons he’s even better at marketing. Last week Wyman took the opportunity to explain the value of audit, while receiving the ICAEW’s outstanding achievement award for 2006. A strong sense of deja-vu flitted across TS’ mind prompted by some uncanny resemblances to a PwC billboard campaign of a few months back entitled ‘Value your Audit’.
And while we’re on the ICAEW, we recently attended that august body’s annual dinner to hear chief executive Eric Anstee say he hoped it wouldn’t clash with CIPFA’s shindig next year. An ICAEW spokesman said it was a remark about scheduling, but the ripple of applause that followed indicated that merger is still on the mind of Moorgate Place.
Colin on Coppers
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Hang on - isn’t that a film title?
‘The Nine’, it’s a horror film isn’t it? What about ‘The Carter Principle’ didn’t Gene Hackman or Michael Caine star in that in the mid-70s?
Not on your nelly, according to the ICAEW. The Nine actually refers to the nine professional bodies urging HM Revenue & Customs to hold back on reining in self assessment deadlines.
As for the Carter Principle, well it’s a phrase coined by the bodies to describe Lord Carter’s recommendation that each new online HMRC service should be tested for a least a year before going forward with ‘full HMRC online’, which has been mooted for 2012.
Oh, you wanted the full list of bodies working together to turn around SA deadlines? Here goes: ICAEW, ICAS, ICAI, ACCA, CIoT, ATT, AAT, plus the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners and the Low Income Tax Reform Group…phew!
World Cup sees firm sick as a parrot
Full marks must go to Tenon this week for making the most of the World Cup before it’s begun. TS wondered how long it would take for someone to push the ‘productivity lost through World Cup sick days’ story, and Tenon has not disappointed. They say the beautiful game’s biggest tournament will cost UK plc £500m in sickies and low productivity. But the firm’s CEO,
Andy Raynor, says World Cup hangovers will be dealt with by forcing the offending worker to run round the car park or play in goal for the firm’s team. Mind you, he adds, if he can’t beat them he’ll join them which begs the question of whether the real drop-off in productivity next month will sit squarely on the CEO’s desk?
It's all Greek to PwC
TS is a very scholarly character, as both our readers will know. So one was spitting mad in true academically fastidious fashion when TS saw this. The world’s largest accounting firm put out a pensions briefing for companies in November that had a nifty new logo for the firm. It read: ‘ΠωX’
Only, sadly, the ω is not really a ‘w’ in Greek? Is an omega, a long ‘o’ sound in, not a ‘w’. We’re not sure the use of ‘X’ is strictly accurate, either. That’s a hard c, so not ideal for the abbreviated version, which would be P-O-K and pronounced ‘poke’.
Happily, the firm’s updated version dispenses with the Greek characters. Probably best, don’t want to poke fun at a Greek tragedy.
The age of silly names
‘Sharpen your pencil, iron your crispy white shirts, set the alarm clock, relish the challenge, be fulfilled, make an impact, take a risk.’ That’s how PwC pitched its consulting operation a few years ago, before its demerger and sale to IBM. The firm was to be called ‘Monday,’ readers will remember, in perhaps one of the shortest and silliest re-brandings of recent times.
IBM, TS understands, bought the rights to the use of the term. We only mention this because there is a new charity lottery in town, going by the same name.
Did it have to fork out to IBM for the use of the precious term, we wonder? We’re working on finding out and will keep you posted.
As an aside, whatever happened to the age of re-branding? We’ve seen no exciting new and silly names for companies in years, and are getting quite cheesed off about it. But silly names aside, those Andersen Consulting troops got the best deal of the lot, ditching the name that linked it to the then soon-to-be doomed Big Five firm, for Accenture.
Colin at the FRC
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Brains and beauty
TS has always considered accountancy ‘the beautiful profession’ and now we have proof.
Tineke De Freitas, pictured right, is set to be the representative of Trinidad & Tobago in Miss World this September. What’s more, she’s an accountant.
Tineike has worked for Ernst & Young for the last four years passing her exams ‘without a hitch’. According to the Caribbean Times, Tineke has ‘found her groove’ in the tax department there. It has been noted that the beauty queen obviously has a head for figures.
TS is keen to find out what Tineke’s hopes and ambitions will be when she reveals them as part of the beauty pageant. Will she go for world peace and global harmony, or just global accounting standards?
Says Tineke: ‘I think (the pageant) will make me a well-rounded woman. Not just one who can go on stage and smile. Someone who is well spoken, well read, well travelled...who picks up and goes to
Poland. It’s an opportunity to be an ambassador.’
FRC goes blank on audit competition
Fair play to the Financial Reporting Council, TS thinks. The watchdog may have come in for a bit of stick recently, but at last week’s meeting on audit competition it was unequivocal on the way forward.
Companies and investors may be concerned over lack of competition, but when running through the findings of the report into audit choice, oversight board director Paul George was there to show some mettle. Talking us through a slideshow of findings, he eventually came to the crunch point.
‘And what are we going do to?’ he stated to accounting’s glitterati before clicking on his computer to move on his power point presentation. Cue a black screen with the words ‘end of slideshow’.
You can’t say that the FRC isn’t honest!
Tony braves the pain
A grimace on the face of an Accountancy Age profilee is not an unusual sight, TS has come to realise.
Whether it’s a tough grilling, boredom or the desperate need to go to the loo during a particularly long question time, some of those in the hot seat have been less than happy to be there.
But the look of discomfort on the face of this week’s subject, new R3 president Tony Supperstone, was for a much more basic reason.
Having fallen down a flight of stairs the night before, Supperstone battled his way into the Brum office of BDO Stoy Hayward to fulfill his interviewing requirements before scooting off to the accident and emergency department of the local hospital.
It emerged the day after that Tony had actually broken a rib, so much kudos for the chat. If he digs in just half as much for R3 members we are sure they will have no complaints.
IAS39 a burning issue for Dixons man
Poor Matthew Hurn, the treasurer of Dixons (sorry Currys.digital), owner of DSG International. After the sheer weight of paper work and red tape involved in IAS39 left him punch-drunk and staggering, he has not even been able to reap the fruits of his accounting labour.
After Hurn had documented all the group’s hedges, collars, derivatives and what not, the reams of paperwork were placed in storage just a few blocks away from the Buncefield oil depot in Hertfordshire. You may not need TS to tell you what happened next.
Since the depot, well, went up in smoke, Hurn has been unable to locate his documents. ‘They are soaked through and sitting in quarantine. I don’t know what I am going to do when the auditors come around,’ he said dejectedly. Let’s just hope the auditors believe him. TS tried a similar excuse once to get out of homework at school but only ended up with detention.
