Costs and benefits of law changes not clear
Why are the impacts of the government's massive list of proposed changes to audit, company law, governance and regulatory frameworks still not quantified? Jon Moulton believes the timetable for ''a lousy process" could see the proposals become law before the costs and any benefits are fully understood
My eyes rapidly dropped from the BEIS’s monster main document of proposals to the related, catchily titled Impact Assessment (IA). This is just 210 pages, and purports to show the costs and benefits for what it describes as “around 150” recommendations. That’s 83 recommendations from the Kingman Review, four from the Competition and Markets Authority and 64 from the Brydon Review. You would hope that the cost/benefit analysis would clearly convey why massive change is deemed appropriate. But, as we all know, life is full of disappointments.
First, and most oddly, the numbers are, it seems, all in ‘2016 prices’. This predates any of the reviews and is rather less useful than simply current values. But let’s put that to one side – at least it’s a price.
The first of the segments evaluated in the IA is the extension of the public interest entity (PIE) definition. The effect is that more organisations will be required to meet more corporate governance and disclosure rules. This extension of the PIE definition will load lots of cost on to businesses, including AIM companies, that have a marketing capitalisation of more than €200m.
The analysis shows set-up costs of £124.7m and annual costs of £185m. These figures are then fed into a DCF model, with a 3.5% discount rate and costs ceasing abruptly at the end of a decade. No explanation is offered for the 3.5% nor for the 10-year duration of the costs. But if you accept these assumptions, you get a total DCF cost of £1.7bn.
All the proposals get similar treatment. If you use current gilt rates, roughly 1.25%, as a discount rate and assume the costs last 20 years, the PIE DCF cost doubles to £3.4bn. On that basis, the overall proposals will have an NPV of around £10bn.
These cost estimates are not strongly defended. The IA says: “Estimates of costs are tentative at this stage – more policy work and responses to the consultation will help us refine our estimates.” Given the process timetable, this will mean that, in all likelihood, the proposals will be law before costs are well understood. This is lousy process and there has been more than a year for estimates to move beyond ‘tentative’.
Cynical? Me?
OK, enough of the costs. What are the benefits? What do you get for a £10bn-plus outlay? Well, that’s really interesting. In every single one of the 27 cost-benefit summaries, a pretty damning admission appears – “no benefits monetised” – in the value of the benefits box. They do write of possible esoteric benefits, but without putting a number on any. Not even cynical old me believes there are absolutely no measurable benefits somewhere among the 150 proposals.
It’s worth remembering that these changes are being imposed on the audit industry and companies because of perceived poor quality of auditing and corporate governance. The proposals themselves are the result of ‘audits’ of the status quo. There is definitely an element of irony in the fact that the related measurement of the proposals should be so feebly constructed. If the Financial Reporting Council reviewed the IA with the rigour with which it reviews audits, then a bottom rating would seem inevitable.
The whole purpose of an impact assessment is to see if the policies being pushed forward make sense. I expect that those policies will now proceed, regardless of this weak cost/benefit analysis.
For the record, I actually think there is a huge problem in implementing the wide-ranging proposals in a reasonable time. There’s simply not enough capacity of audit capability to do so at all quickly. Rushing things will carry very predictable risks.
About the article
This originates from the Corporate Financier May 2021 edition. Access our highly regarded magazine, and our extensive archive brought to you by the ICAEW Corporate Finance Faculty.