As we approach the end of a summer of discontent in the UK, business confidence is at its lowest in 2018, according to a survey by the Institute of Directors (IOD). The risks of a no-deal Brexit range from the impact on the NHS and the entire pharmaceutical industry to implications for more than €100 bn of European bank debt issued under English law. A ‘no-deal’ impact paper on financial services is among those listed to be published on Thursday.
The consultation period for the independent review led by Sir John Kingman into the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the UK’s accounting regulator and corporate governance watchdog, has just closed. It is intended to help ensure that the FRC’s role and powers are fit for the future and has come after years of accountancy in the media headlines for all the wrong reasons.
It is clearer than ever that for change to take place on gender equality, we need to have women in leadership positions. Nicky Morgan, the Conservative MP for Loughborough and the first female chair of the Commons Treasury select committee, made her astonishment at the gender pay gap in financial services public in an opinion piece in The Guardian, when she outlined next steps for the Women in Finance inquiry. Now we have its report, which finds ‘alpha male culture’ to be the main reason women don’t want to work in senior management in this industry.
Good corporate governance requires transparency. In South Africa, the latest corporate governance code or King 1V, has put transparency at its heart. By contrast, we talk about transparency in corporate governance in the UK, but we keep coming up against walls of silence. Knocking on such a wall may well reveal that it is, in fact, a door. But it is firmly shut because the powers that be think that it’s “best.”
