The Healthy Company is a handbook for directors and executives - and those on their way to getting there. Leading a company today means managing the uses of its resources and relationships and how it deals with the resulting effects over time as these effects will come back to impact the company, negatively or positively, in the future. It is this circle of integrated thinking that is essential to a healthy and sustainable company. The book considers a company's purpose and strategy under an integrated thinking approach. It also takes readers through a history of the company structure itself and the corporate revolutions that have happened along the way. A healthy company needs a healthy board, therefore, good corporate governance and the role of the board is explored. Practical tips and considerations are given for being a director, with FAQs. The successful running of board meetings is covered as well as the role of the board leader, along with a list of features which make for a good Chair. The Healthy Company proffers four matters that should be discussed at every board meeting to keep directors informed and to cultivate better decision-making. A healthy company needs integrated reporting that reflects its integrated thinking approach. This reporting should be internal for management and the board, but should also result in the annual integrated report released to investors and other stakeholders. This book covers the best practice guidance on preparing an integrated report, with FAQs for directors and executives. The Healthy Company offers a seven-step process which focuses on integration and a healthy company for the longer term.

In all countries debt and deficits of the public sector are at the heart of economic policy debate. Debt and deficits pose major problems, all the more pressing in Europe because of the Maastricht criteria for entry into European Monetary Union. And in the developing world debt has been associated with major financial crises. This volume, arising from an International Economic Association conference at the Bundesbank, sees academics and policy makers debate the key issues and their implications in theory and practice.

'A brilliant new book' Daily Telegraph 'Well written . . . and often entertaining' The Times 'A sparkling analysis' Prospect When uncertainty is all around us, and the facts are not clear, how can we make good decisions? We do not know what the future will hold, particularly in the midst of a crisis, but we must make decisions anyway. We regularly crave certainties which cannot exist and invent knowledge we cannot have, forgetting that humans are successful because we have adapted to an environment that we understand only imperfectly. Throughout history we have developed a variety of ways of coping with the radical uncertainty that defines our lives. This incisive and eye-opening book draws on biography, history, mathematics, economics and philosophy to highlight the most successful - and most short-sighted - methods of dealing with an unknowable future. Ultimately, the authors argue, the prevalent method of our age falls short, giving us a false understanding of our power to make predictions, leading to many of the problems we experience today. Tightly argued, provocative and written with wit and flair, Radical Uncertainty is at once an exploration of the limits of numbers and a celebration of human instinct and wisdom.

Corporate governance principles, codes and regulations have developed over the past few years to cater for the challenging realities of a changing world. These advances come in the wake of revelations of weaknesses in organisational leadership and structures, and amid vocal calls for transparency. Corporate governance as a tool for sustainable development of businesses is now more relevant than ever. A recent trend has been to approach corporate governance principles from an 'outcomes based' perspective. This requires businesses to consider the benefits of good governance properly applied and fully achieved. Outcomes-Based Governance: A Modern Approach to Corporate Governance was written to demystify outcomes-based governance and emerging corporate governance trends. The book also aims to aid their adaptability in emerging economies. The authors, from South Africa and Nigeria, have decades of experience and knowledge to share.

The audit profession is at a tipping point. Without significant innovation in its business model, staff recruitment strategies and audit execution processes, the audit profession may not remain relevant in the 21st century. The number of claims against auditors has significantly increased over the past twenty years due to the spate of corporate and audit failures early in the 21st century (Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, etc.). Regulation to monitor professional and ethical standards has increased, leading audit firms to feel under even more financial pressure. In addition, the investor community is calling for greater insight and foresight from auditors. These challenges, coupled with the unlimited liability regime of auditors still applicable in many jurisdictions, are making audit firms and regulators nervous as to the systemic risk of another one of the Big 4 failing.

And yet, the audit profession is in place to protect businesses, their wider stakeholder groups, including clients and investors, and society at large. Therefore, this book asks the important question about the profession’s future and engages a broad readership in the discussion of audit failure and reform.

Intended to help readers to get up to speed with the issues and possible solutions quickly, this book assists directors, investors, business people and regulators, especially those with a non-financial background, to gain a greater understanding of the challenges and threats being faced by the audit profession, which in turn could disrupt the capital market and affect businesses across the globe. The book outlines the critical success factors needed for a sustainable audit profession.

Something is wrong with our banking system. We all sense that, but Mervyn King knows it firsthand; his ten years at the helm of the Bank of England, including at the height of the financial crisis, revealed profound truths about the mechanisms of our capitalist society. In The End of Alchemy he offers us an essential work about the history and future of money and banking, the keys to modern finance. The Industrial Revolution built the foundation of our modern capitalist age. Yet the flowering of technological innovations during that dynamic period relied on the widespread adoption of two much older ideas: the creation of paper money and the invention of banks that issued credit. We take these systems for granted today, yet at their core both ideas were revolutionary and almost magical. Common paper became as precious as gold, and risky long-term loans were transformed into safe short-term bank deposits. As King argues, this is financial alchemy-the creation of extraordinary financial powers that defy reality and common sense. Faith in these powers has led to huge benefits; the liquidity they create has fueled economic growth for two centuries now. However, they have also produced an unending string of economic disasters, from hyperinflations to banking collapses to the recent global recession and current stagnation. How do we reconcile the potent strengths of these ideas with their inherent weaknesses? King draws on his unique experience to present fresh interpretations of these economic forces and to point the way forward for the global economy. His bold solutions cut through current overstuffed and needlessly complex legislation to provide a clear path to durable prosperity and the end of overreliance on the alchemy of our financial ancestors.

The audit profession is at a tipping point. Without significant innovation in its business model, staff recruitment strategies and audit execution processes, the audit profession may not remain relevant in the 21st century. The number of claims against auditors has significantly increased over the past twenty years due to the spate of corporate and audit failures early in the 21st century (Enron, Worldcom, Parmalat, etc.). Regulation to monitor professional and ethical standards has increased, leading audit firms to feel under even more financial pressure. In addition, the investor community is calling for greater insight and foresight from auditors. These challenges, coupled with the unlimited liability regime of auditors still applicable in many jurisdictions, are making audit firms and regulators nervous as to the systemic risk of another one of the Big 4 failing. And yet, the audit profession is in place to protect businesses, their wider stakeholder groups, including clients and investors, and society at large. Therefore, this book asks the important question about the profession's future and engages a broad readership in the discussion of audit failure and reform. Intended to help readers to get up to speed with the issues and possible solutions quickly, this book assists directors, investors, business people and regulators, especially those with a non-financial background, to gain a greater understanding of the challenges and threats being faced by the audit profession, which in turn could disrupt the capital market and affect businesses across the globe. The book outlines the critical success factors needed for a sustainable audit profession.

Integrated Reporting is having a profound impact on corporate thinking and reporting. Value is being assessed on the basis of the sources of value creation used by an organisation and not through a financial lens alone. In Chief Value Officer: Accountants Can Save the Planet, Mervyn King, a global corporate governance and reporting leader, challenges some of the systemic issues preventing organisations from managing in an integrated value-creation way. The shareholder-centric governance model, currently favoured by most companies, will not result in changes to corporate behaviour that can create value in a sustainable manner. The book, therefore, firmly places the accountant in the position of changemaker – the finance professional today should be more of a value officer than a financial officer. Consequently, the Chief Finance Officer should be known as the Chief Value Officer. This book explains this new approach. It encapsulates the essential reasons for adopting integrated reporting, explains its application to date and proposes the next steps needed to achieve change that will improve business, social and environmental sustainability.

Breakthrough new ideas from the leading pioneer in integrated reportingImmediately useful with clear and concise chaptersProvides the most complete story of integrated reporting for managers and students

'A fearless and important book . . . The End of Alchemy isn't just an elegant guide to the history of economic ideas. It also gives a genuine insider's account' Telegraph The past twenty years saw unprecedented growth and stability followed by the worst financial crisis the industrialised world has ever witnessed. In the space of little more than a year what had been seen as the age of wisdom was viewed as the age of foolishness. Almost overnight, belief turned into incredulity. Most accounts of the recent crisis focus on the symptoms and not the underlying causes of what went wrong. But those events, vivid though they remain in our memories, comprised only the latest in a long series of financial crises since our present system of commerce became the cornerstone of modern capitalism. Alchemy explains why, ultimately, this was and remains a crisis not of banking - even if we need to reform the banking system - nor of policy-making - even if mistakes were made - but of ideas. In this refreshing and vitally important book, former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King - an actor in this drama - proposes revolutionary new concepts to answer the central question: are money and banking a form of Alchemy or are they the Achilles heel of a modern capitalist economy?

Around the world, 2005 was the hottest year since records began in 1850. And for the first time in human existence, there are more people in urban areas than rural ones. What impacts do these and similar facts have on the world that your children and your children children will inherit? Can you help to make life on Earth sustainable?

Every person, company and government on the planet, whether in developed countries or emerging ones, has to ensure that what they do today does not compromise the needs of subsequent generations. None of us is the owner of this Earth. And as transient caretakers we can no longer ignore our responsibilities restore and sustain the planet.

Transient Caretakers is a highly informative exploration of the current state of the Earth from climate change to the ongoing water and energy crises, and from issues of waste to tourism, transportation, urban planning and sustainability reporting. It charts how governments, companies and individuals - a homeowners, consumers, citizens, voters, investors and shareholders - all need to contribute to ensure that the Earth's assets of land, air and water are passed on to future generations in a sustainable state.