This book tells the story of accounting in the 1990s in the words of three ASB Board members: Sir David Tweedie, Allan Cook, and Professor Geoffrey Whittington. It covers the problems the standard-setters faced, both technical and political, the resistance they met, the solutions they developed, and the durability of their work.
David Tweedie was an academic accountant, senior technical partner of KPMG and, latterly, the first Chairman of the UK’s Accounting Standards Board (1990–2000) and of the International Accounting Standards Board (2001–2011).
Allan Cook brought to the ASB extensive experience of working with major accounting standard-setting bodies and, on behalf of his employers, Unilever then Shell, and other multinationals, pressing in international fora for convergence in accounting standards worldwide.
Geoffrey Whittington is an accountant and economist who has held chairs at Edinburgh, Bristol, and Cambridge universities and has also been closely involved in standard setting and the use of accounting information, as a member of regulatory bodies such as the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, the Technical Committee of the ICAEW, the ASB, and the IASB.