Pastures New

Many of you will have spotted the announcement that I am leaving PwC to join the UK Financial Reporting Council as Director of Corporate Reporting and Deputy Chairman of the Financial Reporting Review Panel. My career in PwC has spanned 28 years and has given me very interesting and challenging experiences working in many countries around the world. I continue to be fascinated by the different cultures, approach to business and differences in accounting thinking among the wide variety of people I have met.

Accounting in a UK environment has changed fundamentally as well. I can recall the arrival of David Tweedie at the then new UK Accounting Standards Board and the publication of FRS 1. Few at that stage would have predicted that by 2007 we would debating whether the US will join much of the rest of the world in adopting a single set of accounting standards.

Accounting by UK listed companies has gone through many phases over this period. The current debate about extending the use of fair value measures has remarkable parallels with the intense discussions many years ago about SSAP 16 on current cost accounting. I had the fun of working with the Central Electricity Generating Board and with National Power and many Area Boards using that standard in the run up to their privatisations. Fortunately, we have not recently seen the 20% plus inflation levels that triggered the development of that standard, but the philosophy that a current number has to be more useful than an old number is once again at the heart of accounting thinking. Whether its fate will be the same as SSAP 16 - withdrawn shortly after issue - remains to be seen, although then the debate was much more about values of plant, buildings and the like, rather than today's financial assets, liabilities and derivatives.

I am delighted that my colleague Richard Keys is going to take over this PwC IFRS blog from 1 October. Richard was recently appointed as the PwC Global Chief Accountant (no, he does not do the firms' internal books!)  - he is well placed to keep you abreast of the hot issues as they develop.