Financial Director articles from July 2005

Financial Director archives from July 2005

Editor's letter - Sticking two fingers up at Sarbox.(Editorial)
July 4, 2005... Byline: Andrew Sawers, editor. When the Financial Reporting Council asked HSBC FD Douglas Flint to review the 1999 Turnbull Report in light of what has happened since the introduction of Sarbanes-Oxley, it soon became apparent that the man...

Insight - Listen and learn.(Financial Director Summit)
July 4, 2005... Byline: Andrew Sawers. The first Financial Director Summit heard a line-up of speakers talking about issues ranging from the economy to outsourcing to the way to extract value from acquisitions. There was some golf, too. The government...

Insight interview - A bid of all right.(Interview)
July 4, 2005... Byline: Gary Flood. As finance director of Sun Microsystems UK and Ireland, Enzo Tolino found himself bidding for one of the world's biggest civilian IT projects. In his role as FD-cum-bid architect, his focus remained on winning. ...

Accounting - All for one, and one for all. The prospect of one global accounting language seems much closer now that China and Japan are showing some interest.
July 4, 2005... Byline: Peter Williams. Two significant events are taking place this summer, both of which firmly underline the objective of the International Accounting Standards Board. At the end of June, the IASB joined forces with the US Financial...

Taking it into account.(Royal Bank of Scotland )(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... The Royal Bank of Scotland has been forced to restate its accounts, following a Financial Reporting Council enquiry. The restatement is the publication of the first Financial Reporting Review Panel enquiry undertaken since the body adopted a...

Compromising position.(for auditing)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... A report into the quality of auditing at the Big Four accounting firms has cleared non-audit activity, saying it does not compromise the quality of auditing. The Professional Oversight Board for Accountancy (POBA) uncovered no evidence that the...

Corporate governance - Lots of activity, no action. One year on and Sarbox has created process, process and more process. Hell may freeze over before analysts get the job done.(Sarbanes-Oxley Act)
July 4, 2005... Byline: Robert Bruce. Process is the bindweed, the giant Japanese hogweed, of corporate governance. Relax your vigilance for a moment and it will strangle your whole business. The bright intelligent things that can be done within a...

Follow the leader?(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... The accounting profession has welcomed recommendations by the Turnbull Review Group, chaired by HSBC finance chief Douglas Flint, that the UK should not adopt US-style disclosure requirements. Michael Hughes, chairman of audit at KPMG, said:...

Infringe benefits.(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... The European Commission has launched sector inquiries in the areas of retail banking and business insurance to determine whether there is enough competition. EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes announced the inquiries, which could "lead to...

Share the knowledge.(shareholder )(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... Almost half of the companies surveyed for the London Stock Exchange see significant scope to improve the knowledge of their own shareholder base. Some 44% of respondents to Taylor Nelson Sofres' survey said there was significant scope for...

IT strategy - Downloadsamoney. MGM v Grokster may go down in history as the most significant case of the technology age. It threatens to stifle innovation.(Editorial)
July 4, 2005... Byline: David Rae. Not everyone knows this but, by now, the richest man in the world should be a Brit. In the late 1980s, and working from a cluttered laboratory in the Swiss Alps, London-born scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the...

Leaky emails.(data security)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... More than a quarter of company emails contain legal, financial or regulatory risk, according to a survey conducted by Forrester Consulting and Proofpoint. The survey of over 300 US businesses found that more than a third of respondents had...

It's best to invest.(in information technology)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... A survey by the ICAEW and Microsoft has found that although 74% of finance directors are actively involved in IT decision-making, just 27% believe that calculating its ROI has any benefit to the business. The survey found that UK companies are...

Correction.(Correction Notice)
July 4, 2005... In the May issue of Financial Director, we ran an article entitled 'Right to comply' in which we referred to Britannia's group management information manager as Dave Watson. His name is, in fact, Dave Warlow.

Economics - Damned if you do ... European countries must revise their social policies to remain economically sound, even if this makes their politicians unpopular.
July 4, 2005... Byline: Dennis Turner. Over the past few weeks, Europe has dominated the headlines and there is a widespread feeling that the EU is now at something of a crossroads. The public debate, however, seems at times to confuse several separate...

April's fools.(United Kingdom, trade deficits)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... The UK's deficit on trade in goods and services is provisionally estimated to have worsened in April to [pounds sterling]3.4bn from a revised deficit of [pounds sterling]3.2bn, according to the Office of National Statistics. But in the three...

High street lows.(retail trade)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... The gloom on the high street deepened last month after retail sales in June suffered their worst fall for 22 years, according to a CBI survey. The weak result is indicative of the consumer slowdown, which has already led to two members of the...

The Financial Director interview - Bottle Bank. The Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company may not be the best-known part of the Coke empire, but its financial performance isn't lacking any fizz.(Nik Jhangiani)(Interview)
July 4, 2005... Byline: Andrew Sawers. The old music hall joke says, Ode to a Greek urn? What's a Greek urn? About two-fifty a day. Boom-boom. In the case of Athens-based Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, the answer is more like EUR127m a year on a...

Cover story - In good company. Many companies are aware they need to operate in a socially responsible way. But CSR is more than about recycling paper and using energy-efficient light bulbs in the office; it's about sustainablility. And CSR done properly will lead to profitability.(Corporate Social Responsibility )(Cover story)
July 4, 2005... Byline: Anthony Harrington. Most organisations would like to be thought of as a good corporate citizen. After all, no operation wants to be classified as a rogue company and no plc can afford to thumb its nose at public opinion. So where...

Financial directions - Budget successes few and far between. Although European companies have made noises about their plans to reengineer budget processes to improve quality and reduce cycles, few have achieved success over the past couple of years, writes Kevin Reed.
July 4, 2005... A survey of CFOs in 80 European companies by business process advisory firm The Hackett Group finds that only 18% have made any large-scale budget change initiatives which led to performance improvements on efficiency or effectiveness over the...

Financial directions - Leasing a pleasing new approach to IT.(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... Leasing is the new strategy for companies looking to invest in IT, overtaking traditional bank borrowing in popularity, according to a new survey by Siemens Financial Services. The company's research into 400 mid-sized businesses in the...

Financial directions - Intangibles to boost competitive edge as FDs curtail expenses.
July 4, 2005... Driving force Mid-market companies are targeting intangible drivers to boost competitiveness rather than focusing on key business fundamentals alone, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. PwC's survey of more than 450 businesses found that...

Financial directions - Financial bites.(merger between China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Unocal)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... "It is a good offer for Unocal... it is good for America." Fu Chengyu, the chairman and chief executive of China National Offshore Oil Corporation, describes the company's $19.6bn takeover offer for Unocal, Financial Times, 24 June 2005....

Extraordinary Items - Is Hodge off her trolley?(Margaret Hodge)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... You've got to feel sorry for the 6,000 or so MG Rover workers who lost their jobs when the car company collapsed. Now they've had to put up with the indignity of works and pensions minister Margaret Bodge - sorry, Hodge - suggesting that at...

Extraordinary Items - More jargon required.(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... Last month we ran a piece on this page that helped you make sense of what can only be described as IT bullshit. You know the kind of thing: when systems people start talking about vanilla-flavoured, future-proof, end-to-end solution enablers,...

Extraordinary Items - They prefer the lira?(Italy's economy)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... A few years ago we dreamed up a number of wild predictions as to what the world of financial management and the global economy would look like by 2014. Many of those forecasts are looking distinctly undercooked (but there's still time for them...

Extraordinary Items - Outsourcers make waves.(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... Most people regard 'offshoring' as a means of getting back office work or software development done in far-flung countries. A company called SeaCode sees it differently: it thinks software programming should be done on a boat three miles off...

Extraordinary Items - One foot in the courts.(birthday card may be ageist)(Brief Article)
July 4, 2005... If you're the sort of person who gets a kick out of health warnings on packets of peanuts that say, "Warning: may contain nuts", or signs in McDonald's cautioning that their coffee might be hot, then you'll love this. Employment lawyer Neil...