Prevarication definitions: delaying giving someone an answer, or avoiding telling the whole truth. Theresa May’s suggestion for an extension of the Brexit transition period surely smacks of prevarication and all sides of the Brexit debate saw it for what it was. The result is some furious back-peddling by the Prime Minister. Putting off decisions usually does not make them any easier. It is not at all clear what the PM’s strategy is here. Was she perhaps hoping to put off Brexit negotiations until after the next election when she might have a bigger majority and will not have to rely on the DUP? As the EU has been saying, she needs to spell out what arrangements the UK wants and preferably ones that are likely to be acceptable to the EU – otherwise gear up now for a hard Brexit.
One of the problems with a hard Brexit would be the likely tariff barriers to both exports and imports. The economy might quickly adapt to those but it was interesting reading a book named “The Company” by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge – I am doing some research on the way joint stock companies developed to see how we got to where we are, which the book covers well. One interesting paragraph covers what happened after the first world war when protectionism rose and the US and UK introduced tariff barriers on certain goods. That is why Ford and GM set up car plants in the UK which was a strategy to get around those barriers. So if we have a hard Brexit, we might see the same response – UK companies will set up European subsidiaries and vice-versa. Smart businessmen are experts at getting around political problems!
The book “The Company” is highly recommended as an easy read on the development of companies, but it is not very complimentary about the amateur UK management in comparison with the professional managers of big US, German, Japanese, etc, companies. Competent and well-trained professional management seems to be a lot more important than particular legal or corporate governance structures.
Another section of the book covers the debacles of Enron and Worldcom which were massive frauds hidden by defective auditing (which also caused the collapse of Andersen) after which a new Act was passed in the USA – the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This required not just rotation of audit partners, but to quote from the book: “The law also requires CEOs and chief financial officers to certify the accuracy of their financial reports, and it creates a new crime of securities fraud, making it punishable by up to twenty-five years in jail”. It also enabled claw-backs of executive compensation for misconduct.
Although there has been some criticism of Sarbanes-Oxley in the USA for adding onerous obligations on companies, and hence adding to costs, perhaps that was a result of the way it was implemented that was over-zealous. But surely it is this kind of legislation that is required in the UK if we are to clean up the financial reporting and auditing of companies after so many recent failures. Making the publishing of false accounts a criminal offence with severe penalties would be a good starting point.
One such recent example is of course the small company Patisserie Holdings. There was an interesting article in Shares Magazine this week where the Editor pointed out that the case was similar to that of Tesco. In 2017 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) forced that company to compensate certain shareholders for publishing false accounts on which basis they had invested. See https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/final-notices/tesco-2017.pdf for the FCA Notice on the matter. This decision was based on the fact that it was considered to be market abuse to make false announcements, and hence a false market was created. Although Patisserie is an AIM company, it is probably covered by the same market abuse regulations. So this issue might be a question for the General Meeting of Patisserie on the 1st November. Will Patisserie need to provide for such financial compensation before the FCA forces them to, which could be substantial if the alleged financial fraud had been going on for many months? The answer might not just interest past investors but those who are purchasing shares in the placings.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
