First of all, I want to welcome Helen Sanders, who has joined us as Director of Education. Helen has a background in corporate treasury practice as well as in marketing treasury systems. I am confident that the skills she brings are an excellent complement to the experience of the senior team within the education area of the ACT. Helen picks up the mantle on a range of strategic issues, of which the most important is undoubtedly the work well underway on AMCT. We are all very excited about the progress here and look forward to explaining early in 2005 how we are developing the qualification and ensuring it continues to match the expectations of all interested in treasury education.
Helen takes over from David Westby, who was persuaded out of retirement to move from being a member of the Education Committee to taking on the Director of Education role. David has been absolutely central to the work on AMCT and indeed to all the initiatives that are underway within education. David’s presence here at the ACT as a colleague has been invaluable for me and we are all very grateful for what he has done.
Elsewhere in the ACT work continues on a number of fronts. We have sought to keep members as well informed as possible about our input into the IAS 32 and 39 debate. We are under whelmed by the EU conclusion that a carve-out adoption of the standards is the best way forward. Indeed we see this as a worst case result and one which threatens to put back the global initiative for international accounting standards and to create at best confusion over responsibilities for standard-setting. We will continue to lobby the IASB and to contribute to the working group that has been established to consider future changes to the standards. I say contribute guardedly: the International Group of Treasury Associations (IGTA) had nominated an ACT member to be part of the working group but sadly the IASB did not accept this. Our contribution will therefore be by supporting those individuals that we know do have membership of the group.
Our preparations for the Annual Dinner and indeed for The Treasurers’ Conference next year proceed apace. In the meantime we are continuing to provide topical events on what we hope is a timely basis. Our conference on IAS 39, which takes place on 30 November, is attracting particularly strong support – something which we felt was a near certainty as we put the event together. I would still encourage members and others to book soon if they wish to attend.
Finally, I am moved to make an appeal to those that sign up for our free events and prove in the end to be no-shows. We are becoming quite concerned about the consequences of the no-show rate that we see, which would certainly bankrupt an airline (or at the very least cause chaos at check-in queues) if similar rates were experienced. The plea therefore, particularly to the persistent offenders, is to have the courtesy to let us know in advance if your cannot attend an event for which you have signed up. Preferably, however, sign up and attend, thereby strengthening the position of the ACT and our ability to offer more and better such free events in the future.
