Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to be here with you today for the induction of the twenty-third President of the South Asian Federation of Accountants. I would like to congratulate Mr. Indrajith Fernando on his appointment as your new President, and I look forward to working with him in the coming year.
Thank you very much for inviting me to participate in this conference. As evidenced by the membership of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the profession here in India is continuing to grow and thrive. It mirrors, I believe, India's own growth and development.
To talk about the new era of the accountancy profession means talking about its future. It means considering the possible challenges and opportunities. Talking about the future does not necessarily imply the existence of a visible path, a well-defined road, but it does entail the need to define a destination, a goal, an objective. And it has to be a clear one.
As an organized profession, we need to know clearly where we stand and where we want to go. We need to understand our present, our current situation as professional accountants, and we need to analyze the context, so that we are able to face the future with the right understanding and the proper tools.
Thank you very much for inviting me to speak here in India. I am honored to be in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Amartya Sen, Mira Nair, Gayatri Spivak, and so many other great leaders and thinkers. Your intellectual traditions and scientific achievements, including those in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, and medicine are remarkable and I admire your country for its support of democratic ideals. The American writer Mark Twain has called India "the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition."
As the largest democracy in the world, your struggles and your triumphs are an inspiration for other countries not only in your region but around the world. Your country has made much progress toward economic liberalization and global integration, and I believe that the accountancy profession has played and will continue to play a key role in these processes.
The International Federation of Accountants is proud to count the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) among its 155 members. As a founding member of IFAC, you have demonstrated a long-term commitment to the international accountancy profession and its role in protecting the public interest.
Thank you Walter, and ladies and gentlemen, for your warm welcome. It is my pleasure to be here today. Clearly, there is increased interest in XBRL and a growing recognition of the important role it can play in enhancing the integrity and the credibility of financial reporting and auditing. This is evidenced by the attendance here today of all of you and of the participation in this conference of leaders of the accountancy profession, the private sector and government. This historic city of Philadelphia was the site of many important events in the founding of the United States. And this week, Philadelphia again plays host to a revolution - this one, a quiet revolution in the way that we report and audit financial information.
Thank you very much for your kind introduction. I am delighted and honored to speak before this FEE Assembly, among so many leaders of our profession. Your President David Devlin and your Secretary General Henri Olivier have been great supporters of IFAC and its work and for that I am very grateful for this. The more we collaborate, the more we can achieve. I am very much looking forward to working with your incoming President, Jacques Potdevin, and with your new Chief Executive, Olivier Boutellis-Taft.
I would like to thank your Chairman, Willem van Wijngaarden, and your Chief Executive, Gert Smit, for inviting me to speak to you today. Gert Smit has been an active supporter of IFAC, serving as a Technical Advisor on the IFAC Board - including at our meeting in Istanbul last week - and I would like to recognize his dedication and commitment to the accountancy profession both here in the Netherlands and globally.
The accountancy profession is standing strong and looking ahead. In recent years, the expectations of our profession have rightfully increased. We have not only met these expectations; we have in many cases exceeded them. We have concentrated on doing what is right and necessary, not for ourselves, but for the public who has entrusted us with their confidence. We have the conviction and the talent to keep working in that direction. The hearts and minds of professional accountants are willing and prepared to respond to the future.
I am very proud to have the honor of presenting the IFAC Sempier Award to a professional who I deeply respect for her dedication to this profession.
She is a person of impeccable character and great courage. For the past 40 years she has helped our profession address ethical issues at both a national and international level, doing so with the utmost integrity. For 10 years, she served on IFAC’s Ethics Committee – now the International Ethics Standards Board of Accountants – including five years as its chair. And she served as chair during some of the most challenging times in our profession’s history. Under her leadership, in January 2002, IFAC issued a major revision to its Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants, including a conceptual framework approach for independence requirements for assurance engagements. This approach has now been incorporated throughout the entire IFAC Code of Ethics.
Her work on ethical issues has not been confined to IFAC. Prior to her work with IFAC, she was chairman of the Ethics Committee of the American Institute of CPAs.
I would now like to invite Marilyn Pendergast, the IFAC Sempier Award winner, to join me on the stage.
Marilyn, I highly respect and admire you. Thank you for all you have done. It has been good for the profession. More importantly, it has been good for the public that we serve.
On behalf of IFAC, please accept this award in recognition of your contributions to IFAC and this great profession of ours.
