GENERATION IN ACCOUNTING

·        The great challenge for accounting regulators across the globe will be to curb blatant creative accounting practices.

 

By Africar T. Kagema (ADA - cbe, CPA(T) - nbaa, CPSP (on studies) - psptb)

Abstract The general globalization trend across the globe has enormous implications for the accounting profession. Business transactions and activities are constantly evolving, becoming ever more international and complex; community expectations of business activities are shifting and the amount and complexity of regulation are growing steadily. The public information provided about an entity’s activities, produced and mediated by financial accountants and auditors, is relied upon as an accurate and transparent assessment of a company’s financial performance. As are all professions, accounting is subject to political, social and cultural changes, and some of the influences operating at the present time have implications for the directions of accounting. Political forces seem to be encouraging greater governmental control over accounting regulation; social expectations are demanding more responsibility and ethical behavior from corporations and the profession itself is moving to integrate and cement strong internal and external partnerships across the globe. Accountant of the future faces a challenging, exciting and fast-paced career, with enormous diversity and opportunities.

1.0 Introduction

The current approaches to financial accounting theory have evolved over many thousands of years. The development of accounting can be conveniently divided for this purpose into four periods;

Pre-Capitalist Period, 4000BC – 1000AD, this period began with the Mesopotamian civilization and lasted through Greek and Roman times to the end of the ‘dark ages’. The need for record keeping initially stemmed, from the extensive trade which grew up within and outside the very fertile Mesopotamian valley. A feature of the pre-capitalist period was that wealth tended to accrue to those who held political, religious, or military power or status.

Commercial Capitalism Period, 1000AD – 1760, the essence of commercial capitalism also called mercantile capitalism, is that money was invested in stock-in-trade and, when sold for cash, the proceeds were used to acquire more stock. The development of Mediterranean commerce during and after the crusades, which lasted from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, signaled the advent of

commercial capitalism. In the eleventh century, the Maghribi merchants of North Africa wanted to expand their business to the Mediterranean region – a move

generally free and unrestricted, yet fraught with uncertainty and the risk of venturing into unknown territories. Merchants had to travel with the goods to guarantee the arrival of the goods at foreign ports, and to personally negotiate a good price.

Eventually, the Maghribi merchants established agents around the Mediterranean trading centres. These agents were eventually entrusted with the receiving and sale of the goods, freeing the Maghribi from travelling with their goods. An informal institution enabled the agent system to operate successfully; merchants required knowledge of potential markets from their agents, while the agents were supplied with information regarding the availability and quality of the merchants’ produce. The Maghribi recognized the importance of this free flow of information to the successful operation and growth of their markets and subsequent wealth.

Industrial Capitalism, 1760 – 1830, the industrial revolution occurred at different times in different countries but, in Britain, it is conventionally assigned to the period of 1760 – 1830.

The new industrialists had, in broad terms; two accounting systems to choose from – single entry (including charge and discharge accounting) and double entry. The later was the eventual winner, partly because it proved better for control purposes, and partly because it facilitated the preparation of final accounts which could be used as the basis for performance assessment and resource allocation decisions. The modern corporation emerged from the industrial revolution, as small agricultural industries changed to the railroads and large manufacturers of today. Even today, corporations are still based on manual labour, whether farming, manufacturing or bookkeeping. The emergence of the knowledge and the knowledge worker, however, has created a profound shift in the machine-driven economy as a new technology becomes even more effective and efficient. Transactions are no longer manually tracked; the performance of globe corporations rests on ethereal futures transactions and the value of the company relies on the intangible skills and experience of its workforce.

Financial Capitalism, 1830 to date, the development of the accountancy profession was, in part, a natural and spontaneous response to the strong demand for financial expertise. A study of history shows accounting to be both adaptive in the sense that it is able to change, and it is persistent because it does not change without cause.

        

2 Corporate failure: The dissolution of a company, in which it is unable to continue in business because it cannot meet its financial obligations to suppliers or creditors. 3Corruption: Offences relating to the improper influencing of people in positions of trust, such as politicians, civil servants and other officials, through bribes that may be in cash or in kind, for an official action or inaction.

The global market of the future needs to explore how governments can build better institutions to support the free flow of information to aid capital-market development. Simple solutions need to be applied in developing economies for these countries to find a way forward. The growth of any corporation is fundamentally connected to the highs and lows of the economic cycle. While times are good and the economy booming, corporations chase further investment through an unprecedented level of accurate and mostly voluntary information about the financial position of the company. When troughs appear, however, governments need to focus on the problems associated with corporate failure. This is inevitable in today’s fast-paced economy. Despite advances in technology, the decision making of a company ultimately rests with its human management. No country is isolated from corporate failure and often the true impact is masked by the size and relative insignificance of smaller, unregulated enterprises. Equally mysterious are the qualities of success that enable some enterprises to leapfrog their competition, sustaining exponential growth and expansion at a furious pace. With easier access for smaller stakeholders, whether supplying or demanding investment opportunities, global markets are slowly becoming more open and accessible than ever before.  
With the growth in small and medium-sized enterprises now forming the backbone of many of the world’s economies, developed and developing, newly flexible and simplified financing options need to be explored to provide capital and investment to this important economic resource. And with this shift comes the need to simplify the reporting, control and transparency of information between investors and businesses, as for the Maghribi before us, the free flow of information will enable the success of capital – marked development. Ensuring the transparency and reliability of the process through which this information is supplied, used and regulated will be the purvey of accounting regulatory authorities. The past decade has seen a fundamental shift in how the world’s regulators approach accounting controls, with the focus now squarely on the demise of national standard-setting entities and the rise of a single, truly international set of accounting regulations.

 2.0 Accounting Standards Regulators

The most fundamental shift in accounting regulation, and the one likely to remain the focus of the accounting profession for some time to come, is the implement of the single, international set of accounting standards across the world. With the communication of information the key to the future growth of capital markets, the better use of technology offers the potential to provide data faster and at a lower cost than ever before. Without reliable communication, there will be limitations. Nicolaisen included in a conversation that a single international system of accounting regulation has the potential to improve the quality of accounting in developing nations, and to improve the transparency of corporate disclosures across borders. Some of these improvements and innovations will originate in the standard-setting and other regulatory processes, while others will be driven by investor demand.

  In the largest capital market in the world, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in the United States has set a challenging agenda for the future of accounting standards in that country. Convergence between United States and international Standards continues as the ultimate goal. With the rest of the world watching, the shift to international accounting standards in the European Union, Africa, Asia and Russia has so far avoided the catastrophic predictions of the doomsayer, and the transition in both markets appears to have gone smoothly and quickly.

3.0 Political Implications

The level of political interference in the regulation of accounting standards differs from country to country. Where corruption is already widespread and entrenched ineffective support mechanisms can facilitate further fraud. For example, procedural complexity in the collection and recovery of small debt claims has a major impact on the survival and growth of small enterprises. Overly complex and convoluted regulations may create further opportunities for bribery and corruption. Litigation takes longer in countries with procedurally complex court systems, where expected benefits may not materialize and hinder progress. And, while technology innovation can grow either in the government or private sector, the government of a country can stifle technological growth by neglect.

Bankruptcy law can also go a long way to making it easier for smaller businesses to survive and leveling the playing field. Bankruptcy laws are often contentions and need to accommodate cultural expectations and social attitudes towards the roles of creditors and debtors. In Australia, recent reforms to the bankruptcy and insolvency laws aimed at further protecting the employees of failed businesses, and at reducing the loopholes available for hiding assets    under bankruptcy laws. In other countries, reform is   happening but it is beset with difficulties.

3.1 The Great Chinese Robbery.   

It is a smart businessman who heads for a remote tax haven and keeps more of his own money. But a smarter businessman heads to China, to keep other people’s money for himself. China has a bankruptcy law with holes so large that it pays to borrow as much money as possible from as many people as possible, and then declare insolvency. Creditors are lucky if they get anything back – the law does not give any protection, meaning that a creditor has no legal recourse to fall back on if commercial negotiations break down or the debtor simply rolls over. The law was promulgated 18 years ago and came into effect in 1988, when China was in the early stages of giving up its monopoly on the ownership of businesses. Understandably, it applies to state-owned enterprises only.  Even so, the law says that a state-owned company needs pre-approval from its ‘superiors’, namely, the government, before it can file for bankruptcy. In a political culture whether the government is portrayed as infallible, bankruptcy would be an admission of incompetence.

Although the IASB attempts to set up a ‘best practice’ set of standards for optimal accounting quality, the implications for using a ‘one size fits all’ solution to such a multifaceted problem are revealing themselves with each new adoption. In each country where International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) are introduced, the local regulators face a complex integration process, like in Tanzania since adopted the IFRSs fully in 2004 but still uses the local Standards like TFRS 1 Directors Report and others. In Russia, for example, where IFRSs introduced by law in 2010, regulators are facing enormous resistance from the accounting profession itself.

Sergey Moderov states that: “Many Russian accountants have settled into the habit of relying on existing law, as opposed to exercising professional opinion. It will be a challenge to alter the mindset of bookkeepers and accountants in this country, especially those from the older generation”.    

In Ireland, too, with its unique tax system, regulators are aware that the tax implications of each IFRS need to be carefully examined.

Examples from the experience of other jurisdictions with similar tax principles have demonstrated some contentious issues to be dealt with up front to minimize conflict and reduce the level of uncertainty that can otherwise prevail among the business community.

The great challenge for accounting regulators across the globe for the future will be to curb blatant ‘creative accounting’ practices, which are so damaging to the goodwill and trust of the general community. The way forward appears to be to reduce the sheet choice of permitted accounting methods and minimize the use of judgement.

Accountants are generally very good at their job and will find ways to maximize opportunities for their corporation or clients. Accounting regulators to date have only tackled the tip of the iceberg. Although they have gone some way to dealing with presentation and disclosure, they have not yet tackled serious recognition and measurement issues. Until the accounting regulators realize their importance, the opportunities for creative accounting will continue to increase and the result will be more corporate collapses.

4.0 Social and Environmental Reporting.   

One of the growth areas of corporate governance, and consequence the accounting profession, is corporate social responsibility (CSR), which concerns the more general impact of an entity on the community and its surroundings. It is no longer acceptable for a corporation to ignore its responsibilities to the environment, its employees and the greater community. Over the years, voluntary reporting activity has followed an earlier trend of companies including environmental disclosures in their annual reports. This has been as a way for companies to manage public impressions of organizations operations, and to establish and maintain organizational legitimacy. The use of these unregulated voluntary disclosures as a marketing tool unfortunately compromises any legitimate environmental or social reforms made, further eroding community confidence in the legitimacy of corporate reporting and the transparency of their governance.

4.1 Where is social accounting today?

Although, the social accounting movement of the 70s has faded, the groups concerned with customer, environmental and labour affairs have revived a new social accounting. External, non- stockholders groups are demanding social impact information from corporations for their constituents and for the public. The number of companies who are trying to put stakeholders first appears to be growing. Many have appointed environmental officers, some undoubtedly for public relations. IBM and Japanese companies have been noted for not laying off workers. Honda, Toyota and Subaru-Isuzu have stored unsold cars in parking lots to avoid laying off workers. Corporate environmental reports have unfortunately become a communication tool for companies in disclosing their positive environmental performances, but not the negative.

Guidelines, such as the Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) attempt to improve a generally accepted standard or framework to lend credibility to the process. These provide companies with a rigorous and fair structure for their reports, providing indicators and measurement techniques for areas new to companies reporting intangibles, as well as safeguards on the reporting of transparent information. Guidelines such as these go a long way to improving the credibility of corporate social reporting but they are voluntary and are only useful if management use them to provide a useful overview of company performance from both good and bad perspectives.

4.2 What is the future social accounting?

Corporate executives are not immune to concerns about racism, environmental damage, equal opportunities, sexual harassment, and unsafe products. Sensitive managers cannot casually accept accounting’s bottom line that only stockholders count.

The renewed interest in social accounting is in part due to the insistence by corporate constituencies that corporations fairly inform them of what they are doing and how it affects them. Corporations are under increased pressure by these “exploited” stakeholders.

The steps would be to first identify the stakeholders of the corporation and then identify their information needs. Management accountants internally undertake this process all the time so it would not be a novel idea.

Once the information needs of the various stakeholders are identified, they would have to be evaluated, and assessed for cost-benefit. Finally the best communication media should be chosen, such as a “comprehensive, annual corporate report” to get the information to the stakeholders. If the information is of more urgent nature, then the Radio, TV news media will be used.

4.3 Government involving in social and environmental reporting.

What is the appropriate role for government? Is it, as Adam Smith urged, to construct a system of a natural liberty in which people are free to pursue their own ends, in which the invisible hand will lead people who seek to pursue only their own interests to promote the social interest? Or is the appropriate role of government to serve as a benevolent parent to ensure that its wards act in a way that is in their own best interest?

Traditional accounting and economic models focus on the production and distribution of goods and services to society, while social accounting can be seen as a useful approach for measuring and reporting a firm’s contribution to the community in a broader, more holistic sense.

Tanzania legislation on environmental issues came in being in 1983 when the Government of Tanzania enacted the National Environment Management Act No. 19 of 1983. The enactment of Environmental Management Act No. 20 of 2004 (EMA, 2004) by the Parliament in October, 2004 repealed the National Environmental Management Act No. 19 of 1983 and re-established NMEC. Under these regulations, corporations need to:

·         Invest in pollution protection

·         Invest in cleaner technologies

·         Be aware on environmental compliance and enforcement.

·         Involve public on environment protection

·         Invest in environmental quality standards

·         Spend on waste treatment and its disposal.

In the European Union, regulations cover a wider range of environmental legislation instigated in the mid-1990s. Some of the business implications are:

·         The nature of packaging is changing

·         Packaging recovery or recycling schemes are needed

·         Cost of waste treatment or disposal is rising

·         Corporations need to make more information available to the public

·         Heavier industrial process need to adopt environmental management practice.

In other Countries, the governments have been particularly active in legislating on social issues. Regulatory instructions such as occupational health and safety, equal employment opportunity and workers compensation, allow greater protection for employees, contractors and other citizens involved with corporations.

4.4 Professional involving in social and environmental reporting.  

Although accounting academicians and practitioners had discussed how their profession could contribute to CSR before the movements of the 1990s, major progress in this area was made from the late 1960s to the middle 1970s. Over the past 30 years, we have waited for the accounting profession to provide leadership in the corporate social reporting field. It is not enough for the professional bodies to help set accounting standards on financial matters; standards relating to social issues are also needed. The inclusion of socially oriented material in reports would provide useful information for investors as well as increasing the credibility of the corporate reporting regime. Corporations that include this kind of information are likely to be seen as good corporate citizens.

4.4.1 Surviving the Whistle blowback

Ethical dilemma: An environmental cover-up in a publicly listed company.

The situation

You are a junior manager on the finance team in a large public – listed company. In the fine print of an obscure report you discover a huge environmental mismanagement cover-up which could cost the company millions in environmental protection fines and a serious loss in share price. However, after initial enquiries you find that senior management is involved in the cover-up. What do you do? 

  

Recommended action

It is possible to build a work environment and culture which encourages people to do the right thing and to have mechanisms to deal with issues when some staff do the wrong thing. Regulatory authorities are more likely to look favourably on a voluntary disclosure from a workplace with an ethical culture, than on a result where the truth was involuntarily obtained from the organization only after an expensive investigation.

Where an ethical culture does not already exist in an entity, the junior finance manager could raise the need for one in the various internal forums they are involved with, regardless of any other action decided upon. Discussion of this nature might eventually lead to the adoption of one. 

5.0 Intellectual capital management

Contemporary management refers to the notions of ‘intellectual capital’, ‘intangibles’ and ‘knowledge management’, long proclaimed as the advent of a ‘knowledge age’ or ‘knowledge economy’, in which the economic and productive capital of organizations derives from intellectual capital rather than the conventionally privileged modes of financial and physical capital. Intellectual capital is currently drawing the attention of governments and policy formulators and organizational practitioners globally.

The current measurement of ‘intangible capital’ has developed with inherent misclassifications and cobbled-together accounting approaches developed to supplement their limited consistency and comprehensiveness. To move forward in this area needs a back-to-basics costs approach, which classifies investments in intangibles as assets based on management intent at the time they are made. The use of the balanced scorecard in reporting intangible assets will, over time, provide more detail on how the balanced scorecard facilitates the management of innovative processes as well as human resources and organizational capital management. Voluntary intellectual reporting raises some concerns about the potential lack of comparability and consistency between disclosures.

6.0 Merging Markets.

Past experience has demonstrated that faith in open markets and economic liberalization can be overwhelmed by big, economic shocks. If the events of 11 September, 2001 were to happen again, some feel that the globalization process would grind to a halt.

The major economic powerhouses of the United States, China and Europe might be tempted to retreat into a protectionist mode, and the international process of open markets and free trade may go forever.

The US capital markets is considered the largest in the world and the effect it can have on the world economy has been seen in the past. That capital market is also regarded as the most liquid and most sophisticated. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is generally regarded as responsible for historical improvements to the governance process in the US. It initiated changes to independence and financial awareness of audit committees before the Enron and WorldCom collapse. 

The SEC has the potential to be the most influential partly in the world in the process of improving the quality and integrity of the financial reporting system and issues of the financial reporting system and issues relating to governance. Some SEC initiatives for the future are;

·         Prohibit the CEO or any other past or current top manager of the corporation from acting as chairman of the board of directors, from being involved in any way in the nomination of directors or from being responsible for setting the board’s agenda and meeting requirements.

·         Prohibit all outside directors from holding stock options in any entity of whose board of directors they are a member.

·         With one exception (CEO or other), make the board members consist of outside directors who have not been employed or had significant business relationships with the corporation or its top executives.

·         Establish a continuing education requirement for all outside board members.

At present, however, international trade is reinforcing income inequalities.

World trade shares mirror income distribution patterns. Thus, for every $1 generated through export activity, $0.75 goes to the world’s richest countries. Low-income countries receive around $0.03. Unless developing countries capture a far larger share of exports, trade will continue to fuel widening gaps in absolute income.

In the immediate future, with the rapid growth of globalization,

Asia will need to continue to reform to reduce vulnerabilities to crises; deepen regional integration while remaining open to multilateralism, strengthen financial systems and enhance the flexibility of its economies in order to benefit from the emergences of China and India; and rebalance demand to achieve more sustainable growth .

7.0 Mergers, acquisitions and takeovers

Mergers, acquisitions and takeovers have been, and will continue to be, a feature of the global economy, especially with the cost of labour being inexpensive in developing countries. With the growth of multinational corporations, there has to be consistency and uniformity in the standardizing of accounting principles and practices. They are particularly important when the information is used to compare one subsidiary’s performance with another’s.

Two extraordinary changes have taken place in corporations in recent years, as follows;

·         People who work for organizations are no longer the traditional employees of those organizations.

·         A growing number of corporations have outsourced employee relations; they no longer manage major aspects of their relationships with the people who are their formal employees.

This trend seems to accelerating and represents a grave danger to corporations. Corporations will take advantage of the long-term freelance talent or outsource the tedious aspects of resources management. Yet by offloading employee relations, corporations are going to lose the capacity to develop people and with them their skills and experience.

8.0 Creative accounting

Many corporations practice creative accounting, although to what extent is not fully known. Changes in the accounting standards further increase the possibilities for manipulation of accounting numbers, especially with the use of ‘fair value’. Smith (1992) lists several techniques that have been applied to the balance sheet now statement of financial position and income statement now statement of comprehensive    income to change the impact of the results. They are:

·         Writing down of assets before an acquisition

·         Disposals: profits on sales of assets taken ‘above the line’ and deconsolidation of subsidiaries in expectation of a sale.

·         Deferred consideration on acquisition

·         Extraordinary and exceptional items

·         Off-balance sheet finance

·         Contingent liabilities

·         Capitalization of costs such as interest and research and development

·         Brand accounting: capitalization of assets

·         Changes in depreciation policy, both in method and in the period

·         Convertibles, with premium put options or variable-rate preferred stocks

·         Use of pension fund surplus to reduce annual charge

·         Currency mismatching between borrowing and depositions.

 The practice of manipulations seemed commonplace across several countries. Corporate governance directives related to the settlements in the Enron and WorldCom cases, the enforcement actions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the new remedies available under the Sarbanes – Oxley Act of 2002 in the United States, indicate that independent directors will face very real financial, regulatory and criminal liability if they fail to execute their duties ethically and with integrity. Sowing the needs of ethics does not come easily. It must be planned or developed over time for this ethical behaviour to surface for the good of the company.

8.1 Problems with manipulated accounts

Accountants manipulate the accounts for several reasons, including a desire to:

·         Enhance the earnings and the profit figures

·         Improve the appearance of the statement of financial position

·         Be seen as successful in a political and social climate that demands it

·         Show a steady gradual annual increase in their annual profits

·         Avoid failure

·         Satisfy investor demands.

8.2 Solutions to creative accounting

IFAC put forward its extensive study entitled Rebuilding public confidence in financial reporting: an international perspective (2003), which made recommendations to reduce the possibility of creative accounting. They stated that all participants in the accounting and reporting process were to be held accountable, and that with a positive attitude to ethics in business, the instances of creative accounting would cease. IFAC recommends ten steps to reduce ‘creative accounting’;

·         Effective corporate ethics codes need to be in place and actively monitored

·         Corporate management must place greater emphasis on the effectiveness of financial management and controls

·         Incentives in misstate financial information need to be reduced.

·         Boards directors need to improve their oversight of management

·         Threats to auditor independence need to receive greater attention in corporate governance processes and by the auditors themselves.

·         Audit effectiveness needs to be raised primarily through greater attention to audit quality control processes.

·         Codes of conduct need to be put in place for other participants in the financial reporting process and their compliance should be monitored.

·         Audit standards and regulation need to be strengthened.

·         Accounting and reporting practices need to be strengthened.

·         The standard of regulation of issues needs to be raised.

The most important solution is in the process of education, as mentioned, to discourage the notion that accounting is objective, precise and reliable because of its arithmetical neatness.

Finally, the hardest solution to achieve would be to apply one single accounting standard globally, based on a single global currency.

 9.0 Taxation  

Multinational enterprises claim that the job of preparing for taxes is complex, expensive and forever changing. Taxation effects have a pervasive effect on multinationals. This creates an in depth decision –making processes for internal management. Tax systems are used globally to affect economic policy, social and environmental issues, and this use will grow.Denning reported that the adoption of IFRS in the preparation of the general purpose financial statements is critical for taxation purposes, because in practice these same financial statements normally form the basis on which income tax computation and tax returns are prepared. Where IFRSs require a treatment of a particular matter that conflicts with its underlying tax treatment, an adjustment to an entity’s income tax computation will be required.

Key differences between tax law and principles and IFRSs are:

·         The timing of income and expense recognition for tax purposes may differ from that required by the relevant IFRS, for example, where profits and losses are recognized on a realized basis for tax purposes versus on an accruals basis under the IFRS.

·         Amounts and transactions may be recorded or carried otherwise than at historical cost under IFRS (e.g. asset revaluations, impairment write-offs or the use of discounting), while tax rules generally follow historical (i.e. actual) cost.

·         IFRS requirements regarding classification,

presentation and disclosure generally follow substance over form. Tax rules continue to rely primarily on the legal form of transactions when determining their tax consequences.

·         Some items have an income tax impact but are dealt with otherwise than enough the profit and loss account under IFRS (e.g. directly through equity).

·         First-time adoption of IFRS and adjustments or restatement of prior years may have a tax effect that needs to be determined.  

10.0 Conclusion                                       

The last generation of accountants with a good understanding of double-entry bookkeeping and not just computer spreadsheets will soon be gone forever. There is a general concern in the profession that many accountants do not have a good basic grasp of how accounts are put together. Moreover, they are increasingly conservative and lack innovative thinking strategies. Deakin University has been conducting research into the personality traits of accountants using the Myers-Briggs system. They have found:

·         50% are (E)xtraverts, 50% (I)introverts.

·         68% are (S)ensing types, 32% i(N)tuitives.

·         80% are (T)hinking types, 20% (F)eeling types

·         73% are (J)udgemental, 27% (P)erceptives

About half of the business advisers are either ESTJs (extroverted, sensing, thinking and judgemental) or ISTJs (introverted, sensing, thinking and judgemental). The ISTJs orientation to the world is practical adaption, building on what others have done and fine tuning. Generally, they learn to think inside the box. The implementation of a chosen solution is achieved through organization and planning, whereas the ESTJs make decisions and have things settled. They tend to work on the first workable solution to resolve a problem. With all the changes occurring in the profession, and constant evolution of accountants’ role and responsibilities, what will be the personality characteristics of future accountants?

Accounting professional of the future will be required to have greater knowledge skills than ever before. They will be required to have insight, good professional judgement, project management skills, integrity and ethics. Their leadership qualities must include strategic thinking, planning and have a good understanding of their corporation and industry, risk management and organizational systems and processes.

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