Insight - Only one cook.

(From Financial Director)

Byline: Peter Williams.

Allan Cook's departure as technical director of the Accounting Standards Board marks the end of an era for standards setting in the UK. Along with the more outgoing one-time chairman Sir David Tweedie, Cook can claim credit for the reputation that UK accounting standards enjoy today.

Cook is the real architect of the board's technical output. When he and Tweedie joined forces 13 years ago, success was by no means assured. Cook divides the ASB's work into three headings: putting out fires, expanding frontiers and engaging in international debate.

Some observers thought the ASB should only do the first of those tasks, and there were certainly enough blazes to douse. The abuse of extraordinary items was making a mockery of stated profits and earnings; the use of acquisition provisions had turned into an art form; goodwill accounting allowed the disposal of unprofitable parts of the business to be shown at a profit; and debt could be tweaked to be shown as equity.

Cook claims the ASB expanded the frontiers through the financial reporting standards it introduced. He points to standards such as FRS 3, which brought in the notion of comprehensive income.

The ASB was also prepared to look abroad for solutions such as the way it used the internationally accepted definitions of assets and liabilities to deal with off balance-sheet financing in FRS 5. The result was to give the UK and Ireland a unique standard that won acclaim both at home and abroad. These definitions were also used to apply new thinking to old problems in standards FRS 7 and FRS 12.