‘Remaining Relevant’ is practical and practiced advice for accountants to remain relevant in a ‘disrupted’ industry and has been described as “the most important business book that you will read this year.” Anthony S Bongiorno, The Bongiorno Group. The explosion of cloud computing and its impact on the accounting industry is the impetus for ‘Remaining Relevant’, which is all about the future of the accounting profession - essential reading in this manual for an accountant’s success. “Technology is enabling and will demand the accounting profession to transform. From the changing the engagement and service mix within a firm, to fixed fee billing and off shoring ... everything is up for review. As long-term industry insider and visionary, Rob has the unique capability to help accountants focus on what is important through his direct, and at times confronting, analysis of the profession. A must read.” Tim Reed, MYOB CEO “Rob Nixon is to accounting what Peter Drucker was to strategy: He creates new paradigms and fresh approaches to a discipline that would be headed for the doldrums without him.” Alan Weiss, PhD, Author, Million Dollar Consulting Rhode Island, USA “The accounting game is changing forever. Any partner who doesn’t acknowledge this is kidding themselves. The age of the dinosaur firm is coming to an end, and this book is a must for any accountant who wants to remain relevant in the 21st Century.” Chris Hooper, CEO, Accodex Adelaide, Australia

In The Failure and the Future of Accounting, David Hatherly rethinks accounting in the light of a financial crisis which exposed its limitations. He reminds us that in the run up to 2008 the accounts of financial institutions reported increasing profits and healthy balance sheets whilst their business models were undermining their own financial health and the economy. Accounts failed to provide appropriate feedback on business performance. This failure illustrated a general problem. There is a need in all companies for better alignment between the business model and the accounting model. To understand the performance of the business we need to know how much value is created and how value is created, who it is created for, what kind of value is created and how it is measured. Here, Professor Hatherly provides an accounting model that addresses all these questions. Coordinating business as strategy, business as a stakeholder network and business as value, the four slice (4S) accounting model overcomes the complexity and incoherence of existing accounting standards. It allows managers and shareholders to analyse the effectiveness of the business model and for management to be held to account. It prevents the misreporting of speculative gains as distributable income and therefore allows capital to be better allocated towards productive enterprise, making financial crises less likely. With its insights into both accounting and business more generally, this book is essential reading for accountants and accountancy students and for those running businesses of any description.

We have spent a great deal of time on the continued development of accounting and auditing standards, which are used as a primary component of corporate reporting, to reach today's financial reporting framework. However, is it possible to say that, currently, financial statements provide full and prompt disclosure? Or will they still be useful as a primary element with their current structures in corporate reporting? Undoubtedly, we are deeply concerned about these issues in recent times. This volume contains chapters to discuss the today's and tomorrow's accounting and corporate reporting phenomena in a comprehensive and multidimensional way. Therefore, this book is organized into six sections: "Achieving Sustainability through Corporate Reporting", "International Standardization", "Financial Reporting Quality", "Accounting Profession and Behavioral Aspects", "Public Sector Accounting and Reporting", and "Managerial Accounting".

"Messrs. Gow and Kells have made an invaluable contribution, writing in an amused tone that nevertheless acknowledges the firms' immense power and the seriousness of their neglect of traditional responsibilities. 'The Big Four' will appeal to all those interested in the future of the profession--and of capitalism itself." —Jane Gleeson-White, Wall Street Journal With staffs that are collectively larger than the Russian army and combined revenues of over $130 billion a year, the Big Four accounting firms—Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG—are a keystone of global commerce. But leading scholar Ian Gow and award-winning author Stuart Kells warn that a house of cards may be about to fall. Stretching back to the Medicis in Renaissance Florence, this book is a fascinating story of wealth, power, and luck. The founders of the Big Four lived surprisingly colorful lives. Samuel Price, for example, married his own niece. Between the world wars, Nicholas Waterhouse collected postage stamps while also hosting decadent parties in his fashionable London home. All four firms have endured major calamities in recent decades. There have been hundreds of court cases and legal prosecutions for failed audits, tax scandals, and breaches of independence. The firms have come so close to “extinction level events” that regulators have required them to prepare “living wills.” And today, the Big Four face an uncertain future—thanks to their push into China, their vulnerability to digital disruption and competition, and the hazards of providing traditional services in a new era of transparency. This account of the past, present, and likely future of the Big Four is essential reading for anyone perplexed or fascinated by professional services, working or considering working in the industry, or simply curious about the fate of the global economy.

This book presents the most current trends in the field of finance and accounting from an international perspective. Featuring contributions presented at the 17th Annual Conference on Finance and Accounting at the University of Economics in Prague, this title provides a mix of research methods used to uncover the hidden consequences of accounting convergence in the private (IFRS) and public sectors (IPSAS). Topics covered include international taxation (from both the micro- and macroeconomic level), international investment, monetary economics, risk management, management accounting, auditing, investment capital, corporate finance and banking, among others. The global business environment shapes the international financial flows of finance and the demand for international harmonization of accounting. As such, the field of global finance and accounting has encountered some new challenges. For example, policy-makers and regulators are forced to restructure their tools to tackle with new features of trading at global capital markets and international investment. This book complements this global view of development with country-specific studies, focusing on emerging and transitioning economies, which are affected indirectly and in unforeseen ways. The combination of global perspective and local specifics makes this volume attractive and useful to academics, researchers, regulators and policy-makers in the field of finance and accounting.

An innovative new valuation framework with truly useful economic indicators The End of Accounting and the Path Forward for Investors and Managers shows how the ubiquitous financial reports have become useless in capital market decisions and lays out an actionable alternative. Based on a comprehensive, large-sample empirical analysis, this book reports financial documents' continuous deterioration in relevance to investors' decisions. An enlightening discussion details the reasons why accounting is losing relevance in today's market, backed by numerous examples with real-world impact. Beyond simply identifying the problem, this report offers a solution—the Value Creation Report—and demonstrates its utility in key industries. New indicators focus on strategy and execution to identify and evaluate a company's true value-creating resources for a more up-to-date approach to critical investment decision-making. While entire industries have come to rely on financial reports for vital information, these documents are flawed and insufficient when it comes to the way investors and lenders work in the current economic climate. This book demonstrates an alternative, giving you a new framework for more informed decision making. Discover a new, comprehensive system of economic indicators Focus on strategic, value-creating resources in company valuation Learn how traditional financial documents are quickly losing their utility Find a path forward with actionable, up-to-date information Major corporate decisions, such as restructuring and M&A, are predicated on financial indicators of profitability and asset/liabilities values. These documents move mountains, so what happens if they're based on faulty indicators that fail to show the true value of the company? The End of Accounting and the Path Forward for Investors and Managers shows you the reality and offers a new blueprint for more accurate valuation.