PRESIDENT’S REMARKS TO COUNCIL
10 NOVEMBER 2006
By: Graham Ward, CBE, MA, FCA
Members of Council, fellow professional accountants, distinguished guests,
friends. Two years ago, in Paris, you paid me the compliment of electing me
as your President and of entrusting me with the opportunity to serve you, the
leaders of our great profession of accountancy around the world. At that time
our discussion focused on choices: together we were faced with the challenge
of choosing to commit to rethink our roles, reshape our organization and
recommit to our fundamental responsibilities to protect the public interest. We
were challenged to have the determination to succeed. We were challenged
to up our game and to meet the future with confidence. Looking back over the
last two years, I believe that, together, we are meeting those challenges and
that both the public interest and our self-respect as a great profession have
been well served.
We agreed to focus on the many positive aspects of our worldwide profession,
summarizing our vision as “generating growth and stability worldwide.”
Together, we have focused on delivering that vision.
We have invested far, far more in supporting professional accountants in
business and in supporting professional accountants in small and medium
practices. The number, quality and relevance of the publications of our
Professional Accountants in Business Committee and of our SMP Committee
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have been excellent and we should be proud of them. Together, we have
delivered. For example:

The SMP Committee have commissioned a guide to the use of ISAs in
the audits of small and medium-sized enterprises.

We are just beginning a project on responsibilities in the financial
reporting supply chain. This is to be led by Norman Lyle, whose many
achievements include being a former president of CIMA and a former
Chief Financial Officer of Jardine Matheson.
These are intensely practical projects which will produce great benefit for the
communities which we serve.
Our relationships with the global regulatory and institutional community have
grown ever closer and more productive. The Public Interest Oversight Board
(PIOB) was launched in February 2005. This very high quality group, strongly
led by Professor Stavros Thomadakis, has made a real and positive
difference to the quality of our standard setting. All concerned at IFAC have
cooperated strongly with the PIOB, and this and other demonstrations of our
commitment to the public interest have greatly increased the respect in which
both IFAC and our profession are held. As an example, may I quote Charles
Niemeier, a member of the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board,
who at a recent conference said:
“I am proud to say that the accounting profession has courageously looked at
its involvement with these problems [Enron and similar scandals] and has
accepted the need to change. It has faced its shortcomings and is learning
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from them. And with that acceptance, the accounting profession has moved
beyond the problems of the past and entered a new phase where accountants
will no longer accept being minimum compliance experts. Instead,
accountants are becoming the promoters of best practices…”
As a further example, the European Commission has stated that it does not
have governance concerns with the IAASB and the PIOB, and European
Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has said:
“I am very happy that recently we have been able to sketch out an
international understanding on the governance of the International Auditing
and Assurance Standards Board and the Public Interest Oversight Board.
This will allow us to move closer to the adoption of ISAs and I also think that
the two EU observers should become full members of the Public Interest
Oversight Board.”
Underpinning this confidence has been our commitment, together, to the IFAC
values of integrity, transparency and expertise.
Achieving public confidence would not have been possible without the
commitment of our standard-setting boards: the International Auditing and
Assurance Standards Board, the International Accounting Education
Standards Board, and the International Ethics Standard Board for
Accountants. They have opened their meetings to the public; they have made
all of their papers available to the public, who can even listen to recordings of
their meetings on their website, and cooperate fully with independently
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chaired Consultative Advisory Groups. They have worked and are working on
agendas which are relevant to supporting the public interest and to increasing
the standing of our profession.
Public confidence also would not have been possible without the commitment
of Helene Kennedy and her team to our communications program. This
excellent work has underpinned our outreach to IFAC’s stakeholders.
Whilst not under the aegis of the PIOB, the International Public Sector
Accounting Standards Board has also been doing an excellent job. External
recognition of this is evident by the increasing adoption of (IPSASs). For
example, last June, the United Nations General Assembly approved a
package of financial management reforms that called for all UN agencies to
use IPSASs for their financial statements.
And we have made real commitments to the strengthening of our profession,
especially in developing and emerging economies. A strong accountancy
profession is key to a strong financial infrastructure and to the creation of an
investment climate of trust. In turn, these factors enable countries to obtain
the investment necessary to achieve proper standards for the provision of
health, education, clean water, energy and food. In other words, they, we are
essential to the fight against poverty.
Through our Member Body Compliance Program, you have provided us, in an
unprecedented show of support, with information about the regulatory and
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standard-setting frameworks of your member bodies and about your
compliance with the IFAC Statements of Membership Obligations. Thereby
you have helped us to focus our development work and you have
demonstrated beyond all doubt your willingness to be accountable for your
actions to meet high standards, to deliver quality and to protect the public
interest. This work has been facilitated by our hardworking Compliance
Advisory Panel.
Our Developing Nations Committee, where resources have been very
significantly increased over the last two years, has been doing great work.
Newly developed accountancy bodies are emerging and accountancy
institutes in many developing nations are gaining momentum and influence as
they institute programs, stimulated by our Developing Nations Committee,
which foster a high quality profession. I am particularly proud that, in
September, together with the African Development Bank and the World Bank,
IFAC sponsored a learning workshop for government and private sector
leaders and members of the accountancy profession to learn how we can best
meet the needs of Africa in its fight against some of the worst poverty in the
world. Real action is now taking place as a result of agreements made at that
workshop and both Africa and the world will benefit.
The public has also benefited from our close cooperation with the Forum of
Firms, whose members provide us with excellent people and financial support
and are also driving harder and harder to achieve real quality of client service.
Their commitment to our code of ethics, to ISAs and to ISQC 1 is a real
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benefit to the creation of even fairer and better informed capital markets
throughout our world.
None of our work, however, would be possible without the support of you: our
member bodies and regional organizations. Thank you all for your political
support, for your financial support and for your support by providing such high
quality people to work on IFAC boards and committees. To help you in this,
we have significantly improved the processes of and transparency of our
Nominating Committee, and you have responded by providing us with ever
more and an ever higher quality of volunteers.
I would like to offer my sincere thanks to each and every member of our
Board, our Boards, our Committees, and to our Technical Advisers; and to
every member of our highly professional and hard working staff. I would like to
thank Ian Ball for his great professionalism and his great personal support and
Fermín del Valle, our Deputy President, for his support in the past and for his
leadership in the future.
Fellow professional accountants, friends, together we have faced many
challenges; together we have met them; together we have upped our game;
and together we will meet the future with confidence.
Thank you so very much for your confidence, thank you for your friendship
and support, thank you for the opportunity to serve you.
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