The UK Accounting Standards Board, 1990-2000: Restoring Honesty and Trust in Accounting

In the late 1980s, financial accounting in Britain was in disarray. ‘Creative’ accounting was rife. The authority of the industry’s standard-setters had been drastically compromised when their rules for inflation accounting were first ignored by many firms and then abandoned. There were calls for government to replace the accountants’ self-regulation with a tough regulatory regime close to the American model. Also, rapid change in the financial industry was generating complex new financial schemes for which existing accounting standards were inadequate. This book tells the story of the next decade: the problems the standard-setters faced, both technical and political, the resistance they met, the solutions they developed, and the durability of their work. Innovations they developed have become part of global accounting standards.

The story is told in the words of three board members, all of whom had spent their careers in accounting, one as a senior technical partner of a Big 4 audit firm, one as an executive in major multinational businesses, one as a university professor: respectively, the Chairman, Sir David Tweedie; the Technical Director, Allan Cook; and the academic board member, Professor Geoffrey Whittington. The medium is for the most part conversation, with the standard-setters questioned by Cambridge Professor Geoff Meeks, recorded over three years producing a more vivid picture of motivations and events. Also, in this technically demanding subject, it has the advantage of a simpler, more informal, and engaging conversational style and language.

The book will appeal not just to accountants interested in the origins of the rules they are following and students learning why those rules were adopted, but also to anyone interested in how, in spheres beyond accounting, to harness the expertise and support of business regulatees without suffering regulatory capture.

David Tweedie was an academic accountant, senior technical partner of KPMG and, latterly, the first Chairman of the UK’s Accounting Standards Board (1990–2000) and of the International Accounting Standards Board (2001–2011).

Allan Cook brought to the ASB extensive experience of working with major accounting standard-setting bodies and, on behalf of his employers, Unilever then Shell, and other multinationals, pressing in international fora for convergence in accounting standards worldwide.

Geoffrey Whittington is an accountant and economist who has held chairs at Edinburgh, Bristol, and Cambridge universities and has also been closely involved in standard setting and the use of accounting information, as a member of regulatory bodies such as the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, the Technical Committee of the ICAEW, the ASB, and the IASB.