It was a pleasure to welcome Sir Jonathan Thompson, Chief Executive of the Financial Reporting Council and former CEO of HMRC. Jonathan briefed us on the impact of the recently published BEIS consultation document titled ‘Restoring Trust in Audit and Corporate Governance’. He touched on four key areas which are likely to see significant changes: the introduction of the UK version of the Sarbanes-Oxley act that has been implemented in the US, minimum standard for audit committees, the introduction of the new resilience statement, the purpose of managed shared audit and the expanded definition of a ‘Public Interest Entity’. However, whilst such changes may place more responsibility and higher levels of accountability on executives, for the majority of companies that have high functioning auditing committees and are aware of their internal state of controls and key risks, there will likely be little change.

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