Climate unit releases virtually all remaining data

The University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, target of "ClimateGate", has released nearly all its remaining data on temperature measurements following a freedom of information bid.

The unit works with the UK Met Office to compile one of the world's most used records of global temperature change.

Most temperature data was already available, but critics of climate science want everything public.

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Emissions in the EU: US Vilifies Carbon-Trading Scheme for Airlines

Starting in 2012, airlines with flights to the EU will have to pay for certificates to emit CO2. But the United States has balked at the expensive plan. Their resistance threatens to spark a majar trade dispute.

Does Europe really want to dictate an idea for climate protection to the rest of the world? That's the question being asked by US leaders in Washington, who are throwing their support behind a protest by the American airline industry against an EU climate rule.

The new regulation comes into force in January 2012 and requires airlines to buy certificates for carbon emissions to take off or land at European Union airports. The EU will sell the certificates and allow them to be re-sold. It's a way of bringing the airline industry under the EU's emissions-trading scheme, the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), which has applied to European industry since 2005.

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Sebi's fine balancing act

The main objective of a code to govern takeovers of listed companies is to ensure that the interests of minority shareholders are protected. This was the key premise on which the Achuthan committee had based its recommendations . There, however, was afeeling that perhaps in a few areas the committee had tended to ignore market realities while trying to protect the minority shareholders.

Take for example the committee's original recommendation that an Open Offer should mandatorily be for 100% of the outstanding shares. The report pointed out that a partial open offer provision allowed for promoters to sell 100% of their holdings in a company. But if this sale triggered an open offer and it was partial, the other shareholders may not get an opportunity for a 100% exit. Though minority investorfriendly , this would have been too onerous and made any control stake acquisition very expensive.

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Renewables in the City: A Nazi-Era Bunker Joins the Battle against Climate Change

Normally, renewable energy is produced far from city centers. Some, though, would like to see that change. In Hamburg, an ambitious green makeover is underway -- including the transformation of a derelict World War II bunker into a renewable energy plant.

At times during World War II, up to 30,000 people would cram into Hamburg's Wilhelmsburg bunker to take shelter from Allied bombs. The enormous flak tower built during Adolf Hitler's Third Reich was nothing if not sturdy. Indeed, it was so robust that it even survived post-war attempts to blast the block to the ground with dynamite.

For decades thereafter, the bulky eyesore stood derelict. But now, city planners are propelling it into the 21st century, turning it into a flagship renewable energy project.

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Is climate change the biggest national security challenge we are facing?

Over the past year, I've worked the vast security implications of global climate change into a few comments on The Best Defense, but they haven't taken hold. I cannot fathom the prevailing so-what attitude as the FEMA-grade weather disasters mount toward becoming serial and routine occurrences. It's here now, for all to see.

Tens -- perhaps hundreds -- of millions of heat, drought, flood, and famine refugees are probably going to be shaken loose within a decade. (Some estimates say half of humanity -- 3,000,000,000 people -- will have to move or die just from heat-related causes.) Thanks to topsoil erosion via drought and helped along by deadly, unstoppable tornado clusters and unlivable ambient temperatures, the bulk of farming in North America will shift northward and most likely will become restricted to a narrower band in the upper Midwest and on into higher Canadian latitudes-assuming there is sufficient rainfall there.

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Fuel efficiency: Will new rules cure US addiction to foreign oil?

President Obama on Friday unveiled fuel-efficiency standards of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 – a significant step in dealing with emissions and oil consumption.

President Obama on Friday unveiled a new set of vehicle fuel-efficiency standards that put the US auto industry on track to achieve a fleet average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 – a big step toward cutting oil imports and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, energy experts and environmentalists say.

The newly proposed standards, which more than double fuel efficiency compared with today's levels, follow close on the heels of earlier increases in fuel-economy standards, finalized in April. Under that previous rule, mileage will be raised to 35.5 m.p.g. by 2016, from about 24 m.p.g. today.

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A plea for Africa: Now is the time for global action

A lot of people, when they look at pictures on the television about the unfolding famine in Somalia, say “we’ve seen it all before. What’s different about this one? And why haven’t they fixed it up by now?”

I understand some of the cynicism but if you have been to this region as I have just been, you cannot be indifferent to what is happening there. This is the worst drought in the Horn of Africa in 60 years.

Famine has been declared in a significant slice of Somalia and by Christmas it is anticipated that the famine will extend to the southern half of the entire country.

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Malcolm Turnbull's climate politics

Which “science” and which “morality”, Malcolm?

In a Sydney lecture last week, shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull again shared with us his strange views on the scientific method, and his doctrinaire opinion that a market-based carbon dioxide scheme should form the core of national climate policy.

Mr Turnbull positions himself as a moderate on the issue of dangerous global warming, but in fact he supports the same extreme view as do environmental activists on the hard left.

His rusted on belief that dangerous global warming is being caused by human-related carbon dioxide emissions probably dates back to his days as Minister for Environment under Mr Howard. Then, like all new recruits to that portfolio, his views on iconic environmental issues will have been captured by the usual “”Yes, Minister” clique of bureaucrats and official science advisers – doubtless wielding the snazzy computer simulations that are so loved by science junketeers.

See full Article.

UK launches woodland carbon code

The UK Forestry Commission has published guidelines for schemes that plant trees in order to absorb carbon.

The Woodland Carbon Code is designed to address some of the criticisms levelled at carbon offsetting projects.

Organisation such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) argue that woodlands are about more than just being carbon sinks.

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Why the U.S. Government Should Embrace Smart Cities

The hottest wave in technology today is not about the individual consumer, but the “smart city.”

Global companies, having wired people throughout the world, are now on a mission to connect cities, within and without, through the integrated application of advanced technologies like wireless sensors and processors, mobile and video telecommunications, and geographic information systems. The tantalizing prospect: cities and metropolitan areas that use technology to manage urban congestion, maximize energy efficiency, enhance public security, allocate scarce resources based on real time evidence, even educate their citizenry through remote learning.

With China and other rising nations urbanizing at a frenetic pace, the potential market for the design, production, application and integration of smart technologies is vast, $1.2 trillion by one estimate over the next decade.

See full Article.

'Eco-pirate' Paul Watson is in danger of losing his boat

Sea Shepherd flagship impounded in Scottish port after Maltese tuna fishery sues for £850,000 in damages

"Eco-pirate" Paul Watson is losing a race against time to recover his flagship boat, the Steve Irwin, which has been impounded in Shetland.

The world's most radical conservationist, Watson is being sued for $1.4m (£850,000) by a Maltese fishing company, Fish and Fish, one of Europe's leading tuna processors. The law suit against Watson's Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was filed last year after activists aboard the Steve Irwin freed 800 bluefin tuna from a pen in the Mediterranean.

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The Security Implications of Climate Change

In terms of the effects of climate change, the future is becoming increasingly clear.1 The expected greenhouse gas emissions scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) portends a world in which people and nations will be threatened by massive food and water shortages, devastating natural disasters, and deadly disease outbreaks.2 No foreseeable political or technological solution will enable us to avert many of these climatic impacts even if, for instance, the United States were in the near future to enter into an international carbon cap-and-trade system. Meanwhile, a technological breakthrough that would lead to a decisive, near-term reduction in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere remains far away.

In addition, this scenario assumes that climate change does not trigger any significant positive feedback loops (e.g., the release of CO2 and methane from thawing permafrost). Such feedback loops would multiply and magnify the impacts of climate change, creating an even more hostile environment than the one projected here.

See full Article, in pdf format.

CIPD - Shaping the Future

Sustainable organisation performance: what really makes the difference?

Shaping the Future is a longitudinal action research and engagement programme examining 'what drives sustainable organisation performance' in practice. We have worked with six case study organisations over the last two years, through a period of economic turbulence. We have built a vibrant community of more than 20,000 practitioners to debate and inform our research.

The final report presents the findings and provides key insights and provocations for HR professionals and business leaders to prompt action and help drive long-term performance.

See full Details.

Doomed Planet - "the poisonous policies of the Greens"

As a child, I grew up on the edge of the LaTrobe Valley at Rosedale in Gippsland. From the ridge above the LaTrobe River where my parents’ house stood, I could just see the outline of the paper mill at Maryvale and the then new power station at Hazelwood. Over the horizon stood the first power station in the region, built on the edge of a vast brown coal deposit at Yallourn.

My father operated a transport business and we would regularly drive through the thriving towns of Traralgon, Morwell, Yallourn and Moe while delivering stock for sale in Melbourne. The LaTrobe Valley was the great civil achievement of General Sir John Monash, who, after returning from World War I, accepted the position of General Manager of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria. As the Australian Dictionary of Biography records:

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Man Bites Shark

As if terrorism, warfare, and diseases weren't scary enough, the past year has offered some ominous signs of an impending shark invasion into the waters where we swim, surf, and play, as the number of sightings and unprovoked strikes on humans has ticked ever upward. The number of reported shark attacks worldwide increased 25 percent in 2010, to a total of 79, and warm-weather shark observations off the U.S. East Coast is rising, prompting beach closures last summer everywhere from Brooklyn to Cape Cod. In January of this year, a pilot flying off Palm Beach, Florida, saw literally thousands of sharks, capturing the swarm with his iPhone (and terrifying plenty of humans in the process). A month later, police reported that two great whites had killed a diver off the South Australian coast. And in June, a Cornish mackerel fisherman claimed that a 6-foot oceanic whitetip shark rammed his boat, setting off a British media frenzy. These developments seem to suggest that sharks pose a more serious threat to us now than they did before -- as if they're either expanding in numbers, or just more determined to get us.

See full Article.

Fishy Science on the Great Barrier Reef

The rise of environmentalism as a socio-political movement has brought about a fundamental shift in values and activity across a range of scientific disciplines. Fisheries, forestry, wildlife management, ecology, systematics, marine biology and indeed the whole spectrum of field biology and environmental disciplines have been strongly affected. Climatology itself has become virtually synonymous with catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.

Before the ascendancy of environmentalism, the scientific ideal was an objective, evidence-based, value-neutral search for truth. Basic research, aimed only at better understanding the world in which we live, was pursued with considerable success. Over recent decades, however, basic research in natural history has been largely supplanted by studies predicated on environmental concerns. As a consequence, acquisition of new understanding of the nature and functioning of the natural world has declined.

See full Article.

Green politics bad for climate

Greens political agenda triumphs in carbon tax package

If it is accepted that the government’s carbon tax package should be about addressing the best means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and committing research and development funds to emerging technologies to achieve that goal – rather than rewarding political support – then the package must be judged an abject failure.

Multiple opinion polls over recent months have shown the majority of Australians do not believe the alarmist rhetoric of the government, the Greens or assorted sycophantic environment groups and climate commentators with vested interests in proclaiming climate catastrophe.

See full Article.

Big Four accountancy firms face Competition Commission probe

The "Big Four" accountancy firms have been told to brace themselves for a full investigation by the Competition Commission in a decision that is expected today.

The Office of Fair trading has warned the auditors – PriceWaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte – that it is planning to announce its decision on whether to refer them to the monopoly authorities. Sources said the firms were expecting a full referral, their first ever.

In May the OFT "provisionally" declared that the UK auditing profession suffers obstacles to competition that merit a referral. However, the companies may yet avoid an investigation on the grounds that the Competition Commission is ill-equipped to solve the problem.

See full Article.

'Grandpa Wen' left helpless as internet drives wave of unrest through China

Whenever China suffers a major disaster, a visit from Wen Jiabao, or "Grandpa Wen", is usually enough to comfort the victims and reassure the country that its Communist leaders are looking after them.

So five days after two Chinese bullet trains collided in the south of the country, killing at least 39 and injuring more than 200, Mr Wen duly arrived at the scene.

Standing on a patch of gravel on Thursday that had been cleared of the wreckage, the Chinese premier promised to "get to the bottom" of what had gone wrong and apologised for not arriving sooner, blaming an 11-day illness and doctor's orders to rest.

See full Article.

Business says boards are not just about gender

They are right, no only, but business is also not about discrimination, which we clearly have!

Onésimo Alvarez-Moro

See article:
Sir Robert Wilson, chairman of gas giant BG Group, has warned his company is likely to fail to meet Lord Davies' voluntary target for 25pc female board representation by 2015.

The businessman said gender itself should not become a criterion for recruiting new members to any board, and claimed the Lord Davies review "missed an opportunity" to tackle the wider issue of developing women at work.

Sir Robert made the remarks in BG Group's submission to the Financial Reporting Council's consultation on women on boards, which closes today.

See full Article.

The Climate Wars Myth

The first decade of the 21st century was the hottest since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Global warming is real, and if present trends continue, its possible effects worry publics and governments around the world. Could it foster armed conflict for resources such as food and water? Will Western armies be increasingly called upon to mitigate the effects of natural catastrophes, humanitarian disasters, and floods of refugees?

Think tanks have enthusiastically embraced this new field of research, and militaries around the world are now actively studying the possible impact of a warming planet on global security. Books with titles such as “Climate Wars” predict a bleak future. A well-known French consultant claims that a 5 degree Celsius increase in average global temperature would generate no less than a “bloodbath.” Former World Bank economist Lord Nicholas Stern—the author of the 2006 “Stern Report” on the possible economic impact of climate change—even declares that failing to deal with climate change decisively would lead to “an extended world war.”

See full Article.

Poor Economics

A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

The most significant increase in understanding in development economics in recent years has come from the growth of randomized control trials (RCTs) to learn about the behavior of individuals in poor countries. The intellectual entrepreneurs and founders of RCTs, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, have synthesized a large number of results and proceeded to draw inferences for policies designed to lift the poor out of poverty in this eminently readable and important book.

As their name implies, RCTs study the responses of various groups of individuals or firms, controlling for other characteristics that influence behavior, when confronted with a new set of circumstances.

See full Review.

The Politics of Surveillance: The Erosion of Privacy in Latin America

While most Latin American countries have democratically-elected governments, many still fail to respect human rights, including the right to privacy. Across the region, there have been multiple scandals involving government officials and intelligence agencies engaged in illegal surveillance of communications. These include numerous chilling examples of how interception technologies are being misused to spy on politicians, dissidents, judges, human rights organizations and activists. Although privacy violations vary from country to country, and the full extent of government surveillance in the region remains largely unknown, newly disclosed data gathering programs hint at the architecture of surveillance lying beneath the surface of ostensibly democratic societies.

These surveillance systems demonstrate how communication interception is being used as a political tool to identify, control and stifle dissent. Their use also highlights the lack of transparency and accountability that surrounds pervasive government surveillance in many Latin American countries.

See full Article.

The Highs and Lows of Investigative Reporting in China

Veteran investigative journalist Wang Keqin has always been positive about his chosen career, characterizing media restrictions in China as a cycle with ups and downs. In an interview for CPJ's October 2010 special report "In China, a debate on press rights," he told CPJ that "there was a big fall-off in reporting freedom in 2008 and 2009" because of the Olympics and the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule. But he and many of his colleagues in China anticipated a corresponding loosening of restrictions to follow, pushing the industry toward greater freedom and professionalism over time.

Last week, he had the same message. On July 15, the Hong Kong University-based China Media Project published "Muckraking on the rise in China," a partial translation of a longer review of Chinese investigative reporting that Wang had posted on his blog on July 12. Wang looks back at 2010 as a "peak" point for in-depth journalism which "pushed investigative reporting in China to a new high."

See full Article.

6 Tips for Making Sustainability Ratings More Meaningful

GreenBiz covers the fourth and final phase of Rate the Raters this week.

From the article:

While the surge of ratings in the marketplace — from Newsweek’s Green Rankings to the S&P/IFCI Carbon Efficient Index — is a sign that sustainability indexes are going mainstream, the growth also has a downside, according to SustainAbility.

See full Article.

Risk Management and Compliance – Finally Coming Together?

My thanks go to Rafal Los for inviting me to guest on his fantastic blog Follow The White Rabbit on 30th June! I always look forward to reading new posts on FTWR, so actually being on it was a great honour! I work for an acquiring bank, and whilst I am particularly interested in the security of card payments, infosec is the same everywhere. Everyone has to "do" compliance in one way or another, and we all live in a very challenging socio-economic environment... I note with pleasure that the debate is starting to move towards risk management, so here's my take on it. I hope you find my ramblings of use...

The hackers’ best friends...

No one has been able to escape the news and numerous commentaries on the recent high profile breaches.

Evidently, hackers are no longer lonely teenagers in their back room trying to impress their friends: today’s cybercrime industry has evolved and automated itself to improve efficiency, scalability, and profitability with a clear intent on obtaining information that can be monetised.

See full Article.

U.S. and U.K. Anti-Corruption Enforcement Moving Forward – Part 2

U.K.: A Law with Teeth, An Enforcer Without Them

After years of discussion and debate, the U.K. Bribery Act 2010 is finally in force. Bribery has been a criminal offense in the U.K. for a long time, but this act consolidates, extends and replaces existing anti-bribery and corruption legislation.

The U.K. Bribery Act at least on paper is broader and more stringent that the FCPA. While both criminalize offering and/or giving or requesting bribes to foreign officials[1], the U.K. Bribery Act goes farther and prohibits bribes in the private sector as well–meaning that a company could be convicted if one of its employees pays a bribe to the employee of another company (i.e., to secure a contract or acceptance of a bid).

See full Article.

Competitive Advantage Period “CAP” - The Neglected Value Driver

In 1991, a Goldman Sachs limited partner, Barrie Wigmore, released a study that attempted to determine what factors drove the stock market’s above-average returns in the decade of the 1980s. After carefully accounting for earnings growth, interest rate declines, M&A activity and analysts’ “too-rosy” forecasts, it appeared a full 38% of the shareholder value created in the 1980s remained unexplained. Dubbed the “X” factor, this mysterious driver of value left Wigmore and the Wall Street Journal1, which published a feature article on the study, at a loss. Given overwhelming evidence of well-functioning capital markets, it appears completely unsatisfactory to attribute such a large component of share price performance to some unidentifiable and seemingly inexplicable force2.

Fortunately, we believe there is an answer to this problem. However, to understand the solution there must be a recognition that share prices are not set by capitalizing accounting-based earnings, which are at best flawed and at worst substantially misleading. It appears that this was precisely the paradigm under which both Mr. Wigmore and the Wall Street Journal were operating.

See full Article, in pdf format.

More Demand Will Drive Greater Quality and Transparency of Ratings

A question and answer with Wood Turner and Mike Bellamente of Climate Counts, one of the ratings profiled in SustainAbility’s Rate the Raters research series.

1) Looking at the Phase Four paper of Rate the Raters, what resonates most with you?

Now that corporate sustainability ratings have been around awhile, SustainAbility’s Rate the Raters project helps us gauge what the future holds. The phase four paper establishes that rating standards will require greater differentiation moving forward, and that raters will need to distance themselves from the overly saturated data compilation side of the business in order to remain competitive. We at Climate Counts certainly believe this to be true; indeed, if our goal is to point the business community in the direction of climate change awareness and leadership, it should be done with clarity and efficiency, not complexity and duplication.

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What's the Big Secret?

In 2009, author Daniel Goleman wrote a book called Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. In it, he argued that we were facing an age of radical transparency – the underlying concept being that decision making will soon be public, and has to be transparent from the beginning of the process.

Yet, we are in an era where there are many companies, private or otherwise, that pride themselves on being secretive. Private, family-run companies like Ferrero, ALDI, and Forever 21, and publicly traded companies like Apple, thrive on secrecy.

See full Article.

Food security needs systemic change

The global food system is under scrutiny for environmental impacts including habitat degradation, greenhouse gas emissions and freshwater use. Half the world’s farmers go hungry, while around a billion people are clinically obese. Demand for food is growing and yields are falling. Radical and rapid systemic change is required.

Appetite for Change was conceived to identify what change is needed, and the role the corporate sector must play in making it happen.

See full Article.

It's Time to Grow Out of Endless Growth

A particular remark has been ringing in my ears for two weeks: “We have an economy where we steal from the future, sell it in the present, and call it GDP.” Those are the words of Paul Hawken, who, in my opinion, has come up with the most accurate definition of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) so far.

When I heard it at TEDxOxbridge, I thought: Bingo! We’re finally weaving growth into the debate, and acknowledging that our obsession with stellar GDP and economic growth is simply an “intergenerational Ponzi scheme” biding its time.

See full Article.

4 Steps to Improve the Way Your Company Handles Workplace Misconduct

Whether your company is big or small, multinational or local, documenting workplace misconduct allegations is critical. Organizations can no longer afford to sit and wait when an employee reports misconduct. As important as it is to document every allegation, you need to respond to them too. If an allegation doesn’t seem credible on the surface, it still requires a response – you never know what you might find once you start digging in.

Properly handling allegations can become trickier in global companies, as communication lines could cross and allegations may fall through the cracks. This is why it’s important for every organization to develop and implement a process for handling allegations.

See full Article.

Guidelines on Risk Management Practices

U.S. and U.K. Anti-Corruption Enforcement Moving Forward – Part 1

As has been widely reported in the mainstream and legal media, U.S. anti-corruption efforts have stepped up considerably over the past few years. These efforts have largely been focused on breathing new life into an old law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which previously was seldom enforced.[1] As recent large-dollar pleas and settlements demonstrate, the increased resources devoted to FCPA enforcement at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have yielded more and bigger cases.

In the United Kingdom, where existing anti-corruption laws were also infrequently enforced, the passage of the so-called U.K. Bribery Act of 2010, which came into effect on July 1, could signal a more stringent enforcement environment.

See full Article.

Auditors at the Crossroads

Developing Challenges to Audit Usefulness

internal audit departmentEnron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Massey Energy, British Petroleum. Each of these companies is associated with massive destruction of corporate and social value during the first decade of the 21st century. They all harbored unrecognized risks and presented public images that disguised the real dangers of their business models. Nevertheless, in retrospect, warning signs were plentiful and obvious at each company long before disaster struck.

Unhealthy companies often exhibit symptoms like poor internal controls, misaligned incentives, myopic business plans, inadequate risk management, deficient implementation procedures and corrupt company culture. These and other forewarnings were evident in the lead-up to most recent crises.

See full Article.

Green Finance: The Role of US and China in Scaling Funds

Conference emphasizes potential for international collaboration

Widespread use of green technology could maintain global emissions at manageable levels by 2020 and stabilize temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius. But in order to achieve these global goals, the level of investment in the clean tech revolution needs to be triple what it is now.

While it isn't clear where these long-term investments will come from, the US and China will certainly play leadership roles in scaling up green finance. The two economies complement each other in striking ways. The US is strong in innovation and China in pilot testing and manufacturing. The US has expertise in innovative financing while China has massive cash reserves. Coordinating efforts to scale green finance represents an opportunity that has barely been tapped to date.

See full Article.

How to Clean Up the Pacific Ocean

A recent study from the University of California, San Diego, found that tens of thousands of tons of debris are ingested annually by fish in the Pacific Ocean. In this week's Sustainability Roundtable, we asked our experts how Asia and the United States can cooperate to tackle the problem of pollution in the Pacific Ocean. Is there a chance for collaboration on cleaning and waste management efforts?

Christine E. Boyle is a research fellow at the Environmental Finance Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

See full Article.

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Lessons on Managing Risk in Emerging Markets

In recent years, as economies in developed countries have slipped and stagnated, a number of U.S. and other companies have sought to fuel growth by investing in emerging markets. There are many benefits to employing such a strategy: By and large, developing countries promise access to new, untapped markets; rising levels of consumption, driven by rapidly growing middle classes; and access to inexpensive labor and materials.

Indeed, with each passing year, the barriers to international trade are being whittled away. Common currencies, more-liberal trade agreements and enhanced communication and cooperation between countries have eased the process of finding lucrative new markets. The possibilities for expansion are immense.

See full Article.

IVSC launches new financial instruments standards

NEW INTERNATIONAL valuation standards have been published by the IVS Council, covering assets including financial instruments, business interests and intangible assets.

The IVS are closely related to the International Accounting Standards Board's recently published IFRS 13 fair value measurement, although standards setters agree that valuation and accounting are distinct disciplines, making independent rules necessary.

Financial instruments are one focus of the new standards, examining some of the characteristics that influence value, the merits of different valuation approaches and the transparency of work in this sector.

See full Article.

Corporates 'unconvinced' by reporting improvements

PLANS TO IMPROVE corporate reporting have failed to convince those on the receiving end, according to a poll by Black Sun.

One hundred PLC representatives were questioned over government plans to boost the quality and value of corporate reports, yet 56% said the project will not improve engagement with shareholders and 46% said it will increase the cost of reporting.

Over 80% of respondents doubted the value of the reports as an information tool for investors, with 40% saying that the analyst presentation is most valuable.

See full Article.

China accounting lands investors in hot water

TWO MORE CHINA-BASED companies are suspected of accounting shortcomings, both of which are in the portfolio of major regional investor Carlyle.

Concord Medical Services and China Energy Recycling have come under the scrutiny of key auditors, Reuters reports, although the potential problems are thought to be less serious than high-profile cases such as China Agritech, which was de-listed from the Nasdaq for failing to file its annual report on time.

Ernst & Young said that Concord Medical Services lacked staff with knowledge of US accounting rules, meaning that internal financial reporting controls were compromised.

See full Article.

Survey: Many say board portal improves board's efficiency

Even as information security continues to be a significant concern, the use of online portals for hosting board materials and other company information is growing: Just two years ago, only nine percent of directors we surveyed said they used an online portal; last year, that number jumped to 35 percent - and today, it's at 50 percent - and climbing.

As highlighted in this new article from KPMG's Audit Committee Institute - which, together with Corporate Secretary, surveyed 350-plus corporate secretaries and general counsels - it's clear that technology is moving rapidly into boardrooms, along with some key benefits and challenges.

See full Details.

Trust and expertise: two indivisible sides of the same coin

Further to my previous blog on trust, I thought you would be interested in the below article by Richard Sexton, PwC's Board Member for Reputation and Policy.

In recent weeks and months, many people have pointed to what they regard as a crisis of trust in people and institutions once regarded as “experts”, ranging from politicians to doctors, and from scientists to economists.

See full Press Release.

Beyond Convergence

SEC staff floats compromise on transition to IFRS.

Nearly a decade after FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) agreed to converge their standards in “The Norwalk Agreement,” the SEC staff floated a concept in May that would redefine convergence and establish FASB as an endorsement body for IASB standards in the U.S.

The paper (available at tinyurl.com/3wkej8m) outlines a concept informally referred to as “condorsement” that was first mentioned in December by SEC Deputy Chief Accountant Paul Beswick at the AICPA National Conference on Current SEC and PCAOB Developments.

See full Article.

Security Council Won't Take Stand on Climate Change

The United Nations Security Council failed to reach agreement on a non-binding statement Wednesday asserting that climate change should be recognised as an international peace and security issue.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had called the meeting "essential" to raise political awareness and fast-track adaptation and mitigation measures.

"Competition between communities and countries for scarce resources - especially water - is increasing, exacerbating old security dilemmas and creating new ones...These are all threats to human security, as well as to international peace and security," Ban said.

See full Article.

Don't let savings go up in smoke

POLITICAL footballs don't come much bigger than last week's carbon tax announcement.

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott's war of words has left many ordinary Australians scratching their heads about what it all means.

The Government's modelling says the majority of people will be better off because of income tax cuts and extra financial assistance to households, but the Opposition and some industry groups say the pain will be widespread.

See full Article.

Trends in environmental taxation and policy

Yvo de Boer, KPMG’s Special Global Advisor, Climate Change and Sustainability, provides views on the current state environmental policy and taxation.

See full Video.

Which? report highlights money-saving eco products 'you should avoid'

Consumer group identifies 10 products, including a voltage optimisation device and an eco shower head, that it thinks might not be the best ways to save money

With energy prices on the rise consumers may well be tempted by dozens of so-called eco products which claim to slash their energy, heating or water bills.

But an investigation by Which? magazine has identified10 products which the consumer group claims might not offer worthwhile savings, including one they say could actually increase your energy use.

See full Article.