Financial Director articles from November 2005

Financial Director archives from November 2005

Editor's letter - China in your hands.(Editorial)
November 30, 2005... Byline: Andrew Sawers, editor - editor@FinancialDirector.co.uk. "China today is simultaneously the world's largest start-up and the world's largest turnaround." So says James McGregor, author of a recent book called One Billion Customers:...

On the move - Legal move for Oracle FD.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Rachael Singh. The UK finance director of Oracle, Norman Green, is to leave the business software group to join international law firm Herbert Smith as chief operating officer. Green, who served as director of finance at...

Insight - FSA's first scalp.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Sarah Perrin. The jailing of 36-year-old finance director Gareth Bailey for two years serves as a shocking reminder of the responsibilities FDs have, and the risks they run for failing to meet those responsibilities. In...

Insight - No groanloans.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Anthony Harrington. In these borrower-friendly times, companies can desyndicate a bank loan more easily than ever. So what are the pros and cons of breaking a syndicate to secure better terms or to borrow more? There are cycles...

Insight - Less loose change.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Neil Hodge and Andrew Sawers. Recovery audit and specialist audit firms are currently gearing up to take on extra business as a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. But it might not be all good news. Sarbanes-Oxley and its demand...

Insight - Too big to fall?
November 30, 2005... Byline: John Sterlicchi in Tampa Bay. The US Department of Justice's policy of pursuing individuals rather than firms has seen KPMG survive the recent tax shelter scandal relatively unscathed. Today like most other days, executives and...

Insight - Not so smart.
November 30, 2005... The law of unintended consequences can damage businesses that use the wrong measures or employ spurious accuracy. Use the wrong measurement or set the wrong targets and you will soon find that people try to outwit them, warned Michael...

Accounting. Whatever the terminology used by the new accounting standards, says the FRC, the meaning remains the same. But does it?
November 30, 2005... Byline: Peter Williams. Semantically challenged Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Wonderland: "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." Although it would be hard to compare Humpty Dumpty to the...

ASB to rejig FRS17.
November 30, 2005... The controversial accounting standard for pension deficits FRS17 has become the subject of an ASB research project that could result in further changes to it. The UK standard setter has announced that the legal and regulatory environment for...

ICAS strikes against ICA.(Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, Institute of Chartered Accountants)(Brief Article)
November 30, 2005... By the time you read this, the accountancy profession could be in the midst of major consolidation, following the ICAEW/CIPFA merger votes taking place on 25 October. But even if the merger gets the go-ahead from members, it could face problems...

Corporate governance - Tiers before bedtime. The bureaucrats fingering their fiats for cunning ways to turn the Big Four into a Big Six or even Eight are doomed to abject failure.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Robert Bruce. You often wonder whether anyone in government has a profound understanding of how business works. Take the lengthy saga of hand-wringing over the fact that there is not really enough choice among audit firms capable...

Tweaking Turnbull.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2005... Despite a review lasting more than 12 months, the Financial Reporting Council has made few changes to the original Turnbull Guidance on internal control. The new guidance, based on the original review by Nigel Turnbull that came out in 1999,...

Non-compliance the norm.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2005... Less than half of the FTSE-100 fully complies with the combined code on corporate governance, even though almost two years have passed since its introduction. A study by investor representative the Association of British Insurers found that...

SEC cuts deal with Boyle.
November 30, 2005... Former US KPMG partner Joseph Boyle has made a $100,000 settlement with the Securities & Exchange Commission over charges relating to his role in audits of Xerox. www.sec.gov.

IT strategy - Google's bugle call. Already trusted by users to preserve their privacy, Google could ultimately be running their mission-critical applications as well.
November 30, 2005... Byline: David Rae. Claiming to have transformed the culture of our society is one thing, claiming to have rewritten the rules of business quite another. Yet both are claims made of Google and its peers by author John Battelle in his new...

UK tops e-table.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2005... The UK is among the world's leading economies for e-commerce, according to research published this week by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Only Canadian, German and Swiss businesses purchase as much online as the UK,...

System testing fails.(Brief Article)
November 30, 2005... More than two-thirds of European IT managers believe that systems are launched with insufficient testing, according to independent research carried out by Coleman Parkes and commissioned by LogicaCMG. The research, entitled Testing Times for...

Economics - Global warning. The driving growth of the Anglo-Saxon economies masks a worrying nosedive in their international competitiveness.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Dennis Turner. Academics try to define globalisation in all sorts of technical ways but the simple evidence is all around us: intercontinental travel, offshoring, shopping on Amazon, even Premiership footballers. Technology has...

Brown sizes up Beijing.(Gordon Brown)(Brief Article)
November 30, 2005... Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and China's finance minister, Jin Renqing, have launched a joint paper entitled Responding to Global Economic Challenges which sets out the "opportunities and challenges presented by rapid economic...

Capital floods out of UK.
November 30, 2005... The UK's deficit on trade in goods and services widened to [pounds sterling]5.3bn in August from [pounds sterling]3.9bn in July. The huge rise was the result of a [pounds sterling]1.4bn adjustment to account for the estimated payment of claims...

Merger melancholia.(Boots Company PLC and Alliance UniChem PLC merge)(Brief Article)
November 30, 2005... The bleak prospects facing Britain's high street retailers show no signs of improving, according to almost three-quarters of finance professionals polled by our sister publication Accountancy Age. Asked whether the [pounds sterling]7bn merger...

The Financial Director interview - Rising tsar. Vladislav Soloviov has forged the finance function at Russia's biggest aluminium company from virtually nothing, mining a rich seam of success.(RusAl)(Interview)
November 30, 2005... Byline: Andrew Sawers. You probably have a mental picture of what the Russian aluminium industry looks like: big, dirty, old plant and machinery, unmotivated workers, rank inefficiency. Think again. The picture on this page is of...

Company valuations - Keep the books. Arguments about company valuations get repeated so often that they take on the aspect of economic truth. Many are indeed truisms, but a significant minority simply do not stack up. Here, we address some of the more prevalent myths that need debunking.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Nick Antill and Kenneth Lee. Myth 1: Accounts do not matter It is an apparently peculiar phenomenon that the people most likely to argue that accounts are irrelevant to valuation are accountants. Generally, the point arises in...

Research & Development: Value gain or brain drain?(industrial research expenditure)
November 30, 2005... Byline: David Rae. Conflicting reports on R&D investment have muddied the waters over whether or not the tens of billions spent by British companies helps to improve corporate performance. The 15th annual DTI Research & Development...

IT finance - Absent trends. Uncomfortable with IT leasing deals that push major assets off the balance sheet, standard setters want to make all material assets and liabilities visible to readers of accounts.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Anthony Harrington. The thorny question of how companies should be made to account for substantial leases has had the setters of accounting standards scratching their heads all over the developed world. Dear old SSAP 21 made light...

Finance Directors' Forum - All hands on deck.
November 30, 2005... Vision, entrepreneurialism and strategic thinking take centre stage at the eighth annual Finance Directors' Forum, hosted by Richmond Events. Taking place on board the P&O flagship Aurora from 3-6 November, over 200 FDs from medium- and...

Corporation tax - Doubts remain over tax effect of IAS 39 and FrS 26.(HM Revenue & Customs, IAS 39 Financial Instruments: Recognition, FRS 26 Financial Instruments: Measurement)
November 30, 2005... Byline: Peter Williams. HM Revenue & Customs has issued a consultation paper on the corporation tax issues arising from the adoption of international financial reporting standards. Financial directors have an urgent need to understand the...

Briefing - VAT enforcement - Vatman confesses his weaknesses.(value added tax)
November 30, 2005... Byline: Alex Hawkes, Accountancy Age. HM Revenue & Customs has published an extraordinary report criticising the law enforcement division of Customs & Excise, just before it was merged with HM Revenue to create HMRC. The review, an...

Briefing - Freedom of information - The perils of public disclosure.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Neil Hodge. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 came into force in January with retrospective effect. Its intention is to make the public sector more accountable. However, it can also be used by private sector organisations to...

Briefing fraud - Companies may pay price of employee fraud at supplier.
November 30, 2005... Byline: Neil Hodge. Many organisations are unaware that they could gain only limited damages from a supplier for loss or damage to their business from a fraud committed by employees of that supplier. Lawyers believe a significant...

Financial directions - Private cash spree buys UK merger crown.
November 30, 2005... Private equity deals now dominate the mergers and acquisitions market, having overtaken corporate players in the first nine months of 2005. The total number of private equity M&A deals until October this year stands at [pounds sterling]17.5bn,...

Financial directions - Missing non-execs threaten governance.
November 30, 2005... Businesses will struggle to recruit non-executive directors because those with the required levels of experience and expertise are unwilling to accept the risks that such positions now bring with them, according to Deloitte. A study of...

Financial directions - Bigger ICT budgets boost the performance of UK companies.
November 30, 2005... More IT, more output Investment in information and communications technology improves the productivity of UK companies, according to research from the London School of Economics. However, US-owned companies manage and organise ICT better...

Financial directions - Financial bites.
November 30, 2005... "Will the next 10 years be as nice as the past 10? That seems rather unlikely." Bank of England governor Mervyn King sounds the warning bells to his nine-strong Monetary Policy Committee. The Times, 13 October 2005. "This is the new...

Extraordinary items - Cheers, guv'nor.(financial news)
November 30, 2005... Last month's offer of free money proved popular! Courtesy of the good people at Royal Bank of Scotland, we had five Jack Nicklaus commemorative [pounds sterling]5 notes to give away. All you had to do was send us the right answer to the...

Extraordinary items - Office yukka? Yuk!
November 30, 2005... Courtesy of a property development group in the northwest of England called MDA, we learn that office workers are raising their expectations with regard to things they regard as unacceptable in the working environment. So here in all its...