The strap-line to the WCOA 2010 event is ‘accountants: sustaining value creation’. This is a terrific message, very much in line with CIMA’s own mantra and one that we as an organisation support wholeheartedly.

Thanks to CIMA Global Business Challenge 2009, the past several months of the year 2009 had been an unforgettable memory for me. Even it’s been a month or so since our last presentation, I still have in my mind every single word of our final speech, everything we had been through along our way to the stage of the Global Final in Singapore is just as refreshed as it was yesterday.

Eight country finalists in teams of four took the stage to stake their claim to being the inaugural champions  of the CIMA Global Business Challenge at the National University in Singapore on Friday August 21st. The teams were trying to impress the judging panel consisting of Simon Hurst FCMA - Executive Director, Goldman Sachs in China, Karina Davies - Director of Sales & Marketing, Swissotel Singapore, Vince Cook - CEO, Islamic Bank of Asia, Richard Soh - CEO, SMa School of Management in Singapore, Ray Perry - Director of Brand, CIMA and myself.

Have just returned from a couple of weeks in Kenya and it's clear that the country could be pushed into another bloody policitical crisis. Kenya has so much in place - the people, the resources, even the will. But faced by bleak economic prospects, not least a drought which is starving cattle of food and hydro-electric plants of water, the country seems unable to tackle its problem because governance and transparency is lacking both in government and to a lesser extent business.