The mystery of the missing members: the first 600 chartered accountants in England and Wales

There are a number of factual errors within the authoritative literature on the history of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and of its five founder bodies. The aim of this article is to outline some of these errors, explain how and why they arose, and attempt to correct them. Its primary concern is to establish the membership of these early professional accountancy bodies at the time of the granting of a royal charter in May 1880.     

Interaction between tax and accounting practice: Accounting for stock-in-trade

This paper studies the issue of interaction between tax and accounting practice through an examination of the process followed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) when formulating Recommendation on Accounting Principles (RoAP) No. 22 as a replacement for RoAP No. 10. We show that the ICAEW had a clear intention of persuading the Board of Inland Revenue of the legitimacy of replacement cost as a basis of stock valuation, and that the preparation and publication of RoAP 22 succeeded, to a significant extent, in achieving that outcome. We also reveal that RoAP 22 appears to have affected the way in which some companies valued their stock and how their bases of stock valuation were disclosed in corporate published accounts.     

The unethical practices of accountants and auditors and the compromising stance of professional bodies in the corporate world: Evidence from corporate Nigeria

Investors in Nigeria have lost several billions of dollars through the collusion of accountants and external auditors with companies’ management and directors to falsify and deliberately overstate companies’ accounts. As a consequence of unethical practices by accountants and auditors, which have resulted in the distress or occasionally the closure of companies, some indigenous Nigerian Managing Directors of multinational corporations such as Lever Brothers Nigeria Plc and Cadbury Nigeria Plc have been sacked and replaced with expatriates. Some companies placed under receivership have also lost billions of dollars due to professional misconduct by their official receivers. Contrary to the claim of ‘protecting the public interest,’ accountants and auditors may be partly responsible for cases of distress and closure of companies and banking institutions in Nigeria. However, the various Statutory Provisions and Acts relating to companies and professional bodies all place the responsibility on the accountants and auditors to detect and report to the regulators cases of suspected fraud and accounting malpractice. Through detailed consideration of cases of fraud, falsifications and deliberate overstatement of companies’ accounts, this paper examines the claim that the professional bodies are capable of protecting the public interest. It utilizes archival documents to provide evidence that suggests professional misconduct by accountants, particularly the members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN). The paper provides further evidence that ICAN has been reluctant to either investigate or sanction its erring members. The paper posits that the reluctance or inability of the ICAN's “Investigation and Disciplinary Machinery” to either investigate or discipline the erring accountants and auditors suggests that whether by design or default, the ICAN's “Investigation and Disciplinary Machinery” operates to shield the activities of its erring members in accountancy firms from critical scrutiny.     

Accounting education, training and the profession in the Commonwealth Caribbean: Integration or internationalisation?

In light of the January 2006 inauguration of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME), regional accountants now face the challenge of reshaping the system of professional education and training inherited from the UK-based ACCA at independence or transferred to the Caribbean economies by the American-based CPA and the Canadian-based CGA after independence, in order to better serve the socio-economic needs of Caribbean economies. This paper therefore examines the way forward for the professional education and training in accountancy in the context of the now independent post-colonial developing economies of the Caribbean. Given the structural, economic and social deficiencies deriving from their colonial history, these countries need to move away from the externally derived model of accounting education and its legacy of inappropriate content, methodology and pedagogy. Available evidence suggests that the integration of the accountancy profession could aid and accelerate the successful operation of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy. In fact, such evidence suggests that the integration of the accounting profession represents the preference of the people of the Commonwealth Caribbean. In addition the evidence suggests that the integration of the profession could contribute significantly to the projection of a Caribbean identity, to economic development and could ultimately make a major contribution to the survival of the Commonwealth Caribbean economies in the global economic system.