I don’t think anyone here suggests that accountants shouldn’t be a part of the structure of any large company. But is it too much to ask that they are honest? In the situation we are referring to here, we see expenses being put against capital expenditure. That’s not clever accounting, it’s lying. It has particular relevance here, since there was an allegation recently about one airline capitalising the maintenance costs of its aircraft so that they would not appear on the operating cost side.
Henk Potts of
Barclay’s Stockbrokers summed it up very well yesterday when he said ‘Accountants are there to serve the shareholders and not the board. If we can’t trust them, then we might all just as well pack up and go home’.
I’m sick and tired of clever suits who spend their time trying to fiddle the books and screw the staff just so that they can achieve their annual bonus. If you ask me the whole gambit of corporate remuneration packages and performance appraisal needs to be looked at very closely indeed. This sort of practice wouldn’t be tolerated in the second hand car trade, let alone a safety critical professional industry.
