Last night CIMA student Howard Ebison became the latest of the remaining six candidates in the (UK) BBC TV series The Apprentice to be fired.

The 12-week competition sets the candidates through a gruelling series of tasks and the first prize is the job of Sir Alan Sugar's apprentice, with a six figure salary.

I was interviewed for an article in New Street Journal.com a few weeks ago and I'm pleased to say that the article is out today. It reveals five secrets of success for women in Asia. They apply to westerners trying to find their way in a new culture, as well as to locals aiming to move up the career ladder.

The fifth instalment of our 'Going social' series in our monthly online magazine Insight welcomes back guest author Heather Townsend. In this blog post Heather looks at ways to avoid wasting time and network more effectively in different situations.

--

Good progress for diversity today. From October next year listed companies will have to report annually on their boardroom diversity policy, and progress against targets, or explain non-compliance.

The third instalment of our 'Going social' series in our monthly online magazine Insight moves onto our blogs in order to walk the walk. This month guest author Heather Townsend looks at the arguments for using both online and face to face networking to generate business and career success.

---

The combination of a bachelor’s or master’s degree and the professional CIMA qualification can give a powerful boost to your career. For this reason, we've been negotiating with a number of institutions to support and accredit the CIMA curriculum as part of a flexible and fit-for-purpose range of tailored degrees. I'm excited to be able to tell you that a number of new partnerships have now been confirmed.

Dr Bakar, renowned Shari’ah scholar and President / CEO of Amanie Advisors and Consultancy, discusses the introduction of the new suite of Islamic finance qualifications from CIMA during a visit to their launch event at UCSI University, Malaysia, in June 2011.

A group of the UK’s leading headhunters has committed to providing long lists where at least 30% of the prospective candidates are women.   The code, drawn up by 20 executive search firms, also puts a new focus on ‘skills’ such as good judgment and perceptiveness, rather than just focusing on experience, to allow for a wider selection of candidates.

The impact of austerity measures is likely to be felt for several years to come, across UK and in some cases, substantial proportion of worforce in entire towns could be out of work, due to the cuts in public sector.

In my role across boardrooms of businesses in the UK and the USA I am fortunate to meet some strong, dynamic and uniquely talented women. Last week I had the pleasure of meeting a brilliant fund manager, who has created an investment fund targeted at female owned high growth businesses. She is transforming those businesses through the funding she enables.

If you've forgotten why we still need an International Women's Day, please read this article by Mariella Frostrup, a TV presenter and Observer newspaper columnist. Some reminders are:

Lord Davies, who today published his independent review into Women on Boards, stopped short of imposing quotas, but has urged FTSE 350 companies to set their own targets for female representation at board level, and to publicly report these targets. 

He recommends that UK listed companies in the FTSE 100 should be aiming for a minimum of 25% female board member representation by 2015 (and 20% in the next two years). That's more than double the number of women currently on boards. But he stopped short of imposing quotas, unless these voluntary measures fail.

Whenever prospective CIMA students come to me for advice they usually take me down one of two paths. The ‘make or buy’ decision – which Anna kindly wrote about just a few days ago in less cryptic language (there was no coordination, honest) – and what Porter might refer to as the ‘generic strategy’ quandary.

Lord Davies, a former business minister, was asked by Vince Cable, the business secretary, to look for ways to boost gender equality in UK boardrooms. In the UK only 12.5% of directors in FTSE100 companies are women, and there has been no significant improvement in the last 3 years.

It seems unfortunate that CIMA chooses January as the time for subscription renewals. Give that for those of us in practice, throwing ourselves of a very steep cliff seems infinately more appealing than another year as an accountant in practice.