The European Union will apply lessons from the Wirecard scandal by proposing stricter rules next year for company financial reporting and auditors, its financial services chief said.
The payments company collapsed in 2020 in Germany's biggest post-war fraud scandal after auditor EY could not confirm the existence of €1.9 billion ($2.32bn) in cash balances.
"Wirecard is a wake-up call. Wirecard told and sold a great story that wasn't true," Mairead McGuinness said in a speech to the European Policy Centre on Thursday.
"More and more board members should think twice if they are going to sit on a board and look at their wider responsibilities rather than just looking internally at the bottom line," she said.
Ms McGuinness will launch a public consultation after the summer looking at company audit committees, the outside auditors who sign off on financial figures companies publish and the regulators who supervise them.
It will examine whether responsibilities of company board members to provide accurate financial reports are defined clearly enough.
The consultation will reflect on how to improve the role of company audit committees and whether they should be mandatory.
Ms McGuinness said supervisors for auditors across the EU had found problems with internal quality control systems.
"They also found a lack of or inappropriate monitoring of high-risk audited entities and insufficient audit evidence and documentation," she added.
"And it is for these reasons that I aim to have a proposal ready by the end of 2022 to tackle the problems and to strengthen the quality of public reporting and its enforcement."
Ms McGuinness said "more and stronger action" may also be needed to ensure competition in an audit market where EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC, dubbed the Big Four, have a combined market share of 92 per cent.
The EU is rolling out requirements for companies to report on the "sustainability" of their activities to help meet goals for reducing carbon emissions.
"I would not like to see that concentration of control over the sustainability reporting," Ms McGuinness said of the Big Four.
Other reasons for the "lack of quality" in auditing might also be a focus on more attractive non-audit services, she said.
EU securities watchdog ESMA criticised German regulator BaFin last year for deficiencies in its handling of Wirecard and suggested stronger co-operation between national and EU-level audit regulators.
This provided a "very good starting point", McGuinness said.
The EU brought in rules for the audit market in 2016 that require companies to change auditors every few years and imposed a cap on non-audit services, but there are national variations.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Manchester United v Club America
When: Thursday, 9pm Arizona time (Friday UAE, 8am)
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.
The five pillars of Islam
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The biog
Name: Abeer Al Bah
Born: 1972
Husband: Emirati lawyer Salem Bin Sahoo, since 1992
Children: Soud, born 1993, lawyer; Obaid, born 1994, deceased; four other boys and one girl, three months old
Education: BA in Elementary Education, worked for five years in a Dubai school
