With 2020’s event cancelled due to the disruption of the pandemic, an audience of well over 250 guests returned to the ICAEW’s most popular regular event – the Corporate Finance Faculty’s Annual Reception, hosted this year at the National Liberal Club, One Whitehall Place, on 3 November.
The attendees heard an extremely thought-provoking speech by Rt Hon Lord Willetts FRS about the challenges the UK economy and society in general face. They also saw the London Stock Exchange Group presented with ICAEW’s coveted Corporate Development Award.
The Gladstone Library, named after four-time British prime minister William Gladstone, was packed as ICAEW’s head of corporate finance David Petrie welcomed guests from the faculty’s 87 member organisations and the Institute’s partners in government, public policy, investment and academia, for some long-overdue, face-to-face networking: “It’s wonderful to see so many members of the Corporate Finance Faculty again, and in person,” Petrie said.
He announced the launch of the latest faculty initiative: to establish best practice in environmental, social and governance, augmenting the work of ICAEW, but with a deals and investment focus. The faculty is developing the project with Deloitte and a working group of experts from across the faculty’s membership.
“The transition to net zero – or at least sincere attempts to reduce carbon emissions – will be at, or very close to, the top of board agendas for companies large and small across the UK – and internationally – for the foreseeable future,” said Petrie. “And this, of course, is where members of the Corporate Finance Faculty come in – as either principal investors or advisers.”
Mo Merali, the faculty’s chair and head of private equity and transaction services at Grant Thornton, welcomed members. “In the face of the extraordinary challenges, many millions of companies around the world, and their employees, have shown extraordinary resilience, adaptability and commitment. We can be proud of the role that expert advisers have played in helping businesses,” he said, going on to thank faculty staff for the work done on behalf of members over the past 18 months, as well as the faculty’s board and technical committee. He also welcomed the 14 firms that had become faculty members in 2020-21.
Joanna Scott, managing director of BOOST&Co, a co-sponsor of the Annual Reception, spoke of the work her firm was doing to provide finance and support innovative businesses across the UK. BOOST&Co will also be partnering with the faculty in its new programme, ‘Boosting Growth Capital for Innovation’ – an initiative to highlight successful companies, deals and the breadth and depth of the UK’s growth-finance market.
The evening was also sponsored by Arbuthnot Commercial Asset Based Lending, Beauhurst and mnAI – all of which are members of the faculty.
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Wise words from Lord WillettsThe guest speaker at the Annual Reception was former Conservative government minister Rt Hon Lord Willetts FRS, president of the Resolution Foundation. He’s written widely about economics, social policy and innovation: A University Education was published in 2017 and the second edition of The Pinch (about baby boomers and intergenerational inequality) was published in 2019. From 1992 to 2015, he was Conservative MP for Havant in Hampshire. He served as Minister of State for Universities and Science from May 2010 until July 2014 and became a member of the House of Lords in 2015. In 2014, as minister, he launched the Corporate Finance Faculty-initiated publication Cyber-Security in Corporate Finance at Chartered Accountants’ Hall, London. Economic challenges“Following on from the Budget, it’s quite a shock what has happened to average earnings. In the 16 years up to 2008, we had huge earnings growth. In total over that period, average earnings grew by 36%. Then, from 2008 to the end of the budget-forecast period of 2024, average earnings will rise by 2.4%. You want to understand the backdrop to some of the social and political factors. The basic promise of capitalism is of continuing to deliver significant improvements in living standards and –let’s face it – we’re not alone, but we’re particularly acute – that machine is just not working. One of the things you find is a significant decline in economic, social and geographical mobility in Britain today, compared with what they were in the past and it looks as if we are becoming a less dynamic economy, with lower levels of mobility. In the long run, living standards depend on productivity and the pace of business investment.” Higher education and innovation“We’ve got to get the innovation machine motoring. Some of the universities that do applied research have the strongest links to their local business community. Many of them, for example, some of the former polytechnics, are sometimes treated with contempt by the chattering classes, despite the fact they actually have closer links to business and better capacity to work with local firms to help tackle the problems of innovation. I also think that in Britain, a historical problem with a public funding for new technologies, new science, stopped too soon, long before the new innovation, the new technology, had been sufficiently derisked for commercial investors to come in.” Inherit or earn?“Fairness between the generations is a really important measure of social responsibility. It used to be that the value of our assets stood at about three times our national income. In the past 20 or 30 years, assets have increased to seven times our national income. The difference between our wealth and our income has opened up, and this is not just some abstract economic statistic. People have sons or daughters trying to get on the housing ladder, for whom raising money out of their earnings in order to buy a house has become close to impossible. It means that acquiring wealth out of earnings is far harder for the younger generation than it was for boomers. A society where it’s harder to convert income to wealth is also a society where inheritance matters more. I worked for Margaret Thatcher, and it was not her picture of Britain – where the ability to earn wealth became harder.” The faculty’s work“Back in 2014, helping to launch the work that the Corporate Finance Faculty did on cyber security was a great example of how you are at the cutting edge, tackling new issues that need to be addressed to keep accounting, audit and corporate finance relevant. You have focused your latest journal [Corporate Financier] on green issues, which highlights another crucial topic, and that shows you are ahead of the curve. This is what you need to do to keep accountancy up to date, which is what [ICAEW] has been doing since 1880.” |
