Exam world meets business world

LSBF’s Paul Merison has launched a new series of free podcasts ‘Exam World Meets Business World’. The latest podcast looks at the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and what accountancy and business students can learn from it.

Merison explains: “When I was studying business and accounting, my tutors told my class to read the Financial Times and The Economist, in order to immerse ourselves in business understanding. Many of us gave it a go, but we struggled to know which articles were relevant, and how they

Time to step up to the mark

Public sector sustainability reporting needs to significantly step up, and organisations must begin to work together before it is too late, says Professor Carol Adams.

Her new report for CIPFA, called ‘Public Sector sustainability reporting: time to step it up’, claims the public sector needs to avoid continually reinventing the wheel, and draw on the existing standards and recommendations to improve their sustainable reporting.

CIPFA CEO Rob Whiteman agreed: “The public sector should be playing a key role when it comes to tackling climate change. Sustainability reporting in public sector bodies has long been linked to our studies. Of course, that was because the FT and The Economist are not written for a student audience.

“Around 15 years ago I published my own newspaper for my students, taking the news and retelling it with a focus on the link to their studies. Now, finally, the newspaper has become a podcast.” overlooked because no sectorspecific standards exist. This report aims to change that by proposing using already existing standards that fit the public sector’s unique needs.

Check out the series at https:// tinyurl.com/4ssku77j. They are also available on Google and Spotify.

“Time is running out. When it comes to sustainability reporting, public bodies need to step up and lead from the front.”

Check out Professor Carol Adams report at https://tinyurl. com/yucvvnpr

My Exam Performance Update

When will ACCA be introducing My Exam Performance to the Strategic Level, students have been asking PQ magazine.

ACCA explained that because it wants to maximise the benefits to students it first wants to understand their behaviours when using it. ACCA has now undertaken research with students on how they use My Exam Performance for Applied Skills and has promised to include what they discover into the design of the Strategic Professional level. That all means we don’t have a launch date, but ACCA said they will let us know as soon as they do.

CFO steps down after ‘relationship with a colleague’

One CFO’s relationship with a member of staff recently saw him forced to resign from his role with a leading FTSE 100 company. In a notice to the Stock Exchange that hit all the financial news pages, RS Group’s David Egan said he notified the board of a personal relationship with a colleague, and following a detailed review by the board he recognised there had been “some shortcomings of judgment on my part and my actions have fallen short of the high standards expected of RS’s leadership”. Egan felt it was therefore only right that he step down from his role.

EY abandons break up EY has said it is no longer proceeding with plans to separate its accountancy and consulting arms. This follows months of wrangling and internal disagreements.

The US partners had already delayed any vote – that was supposed to happen last month.

Now a memo from EY’s global executive told partners that ‘Project Everest’ was dead. Separation turned out to be much more problematic than the firm’s executive team first believed, and it was felt creating viable businesses ready to compete was just not going to happen as quickly as some thought.