Research by a provider of audit, tax and consulting services has found that only 21% of board members think corporate governance is critical for a business to achieve success.

The findings by RSM also revealed that 96 per cent of company Board members it surveyed expected to see an increase in the number of criminal prosecutions of those senior executives and organisations implicated for poor risk management.

The issue of corporate governance has been under review by the FRC (Financial Reporting Council) for some time following high-profile collapses of businesses like BHS, Patisserie Valerie, Carillion and most recently Thomas Cook.

In its most recent annual report, the FRC found that that “audit quality is still not consistently reaching the necessary high standards expected”.

More than a year ago, a review of the FRC itself led by Sir John Kingman proposed the establishment of a new regulator, the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority, but this was not acted upon...

It is no secret that High Street retail has been in dire straits for some time, and clothing and fashion retail have particularly suffered.

The most recent, and perhaps most high-profile example has been the struggles of Philip Green’s Arcadia Group, comprising the clothing chains Topshop, Topman, Evans, Wallis, Miss Selfridge, Burton and Dorothy Perkins, to use CVAs as a way of restructuring.

But it is not only physical fashion retail stores that are struggling. ASOS has recently issued its second profit warning in seven months, albeit blaming IT chaos in its overseas warehouses despite overall sales being up 12% in the four months to 30th June.

Obviously, cheap prices and turning around lines quickly, have been the two main things on which fashion retail has been relying. As a consequence, clothes are often made by low-paid workers in appalling conditions, in factories located in countries like Bangladesh.

However, for some years there have been demands from...

There are signs that the Gordon Gekko culture of “greed is good” is dying and that corporate survival will depend on not only giving customers what they want but also being seen to have and act on a wide range of ethical values and behaviours.

In an environment of high employment and significant skill shortages in many sectors, the bargaining power of millennials and Generation X will only strengthen as the older generation of employees retires.

Equally, the power of consumers and customers choosing who to buy from is having a greater impact on corporates’ processes and practices.

In this context, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policies will no longer be enough. Too many of them have been unmasked as marketing and PR exercises among the larger corporations and of little practical substance. SMEs often fare better, however, being closer to their localities and customer base, where their greater visibility puts them under pressure to be more accountable.

The neoliberal economic model based on perpetual growth has come under increasing attack from environmental campaigners particularly since the week-long Extinction Rebellion activity in April this year.

With almost-daily horror stories about climate change, global warming and the amount of plastic waste littering the planet, not to mention a significant decrease in biodiversity, it is clear that action needs to happen a lot more urgently than has previously been admitted.

Changing the developed world’s economic model from perpetual to sustainable growth is no doubt going to be a major challenge, particularly in the face of a rise in populist political parties putting national self-interest first and also of some leaders, such as US President Donald Trump who despite the evidence still questions the truth of climate change.

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz makes a distinction between good capitalism, which he calls “wealth creation”, and bad...

Despite the depressing picture of a decline in the number of women holding senior executive positions in FTSE companies, there have in the past been many impressive female leaders such as Rani Lakshmibai, the Queen of Jhansi in India, who led her troops in battle (with her baby son strapped to her back) during the Indian Mutiny/First War of Independence in 1857.

In July this year the UK’s Cranfield Institute published the results of its 20th FTSE Women on Boards Report which reported a marked drop in the numbers of female CEOs (chief executive officers) and CFOs (chief financial officers) and other executives on the boards of FTSE 250 companies and that the numbers had remained static for FTSE 100 companies.

It found that there were 30 women in full-time executive roles at FTSE 250 firms, down from 38 last year, equating to just 6.4% of the total, and of these there were just six female CEOs and 19 CFOs.

Although the numbers of female executives in FTSE 100 companies had risen...

Like old buildings that are decaying or no longer fit for use, businesses often need to be pulled down and rebuilt. Should this be regarded as failure or renewal?

There are three definitions of failure in the Cambridge Dictionary: 

• Someone or something not succeeding;
• Not doing something that you must do or are expected to do;
• Something not working or stopping working as well as it should.

Much has been written about the role of directors and how it contributes to the failure of a business but less about the lessons that can be learnt and how they contribute to the future success of entrepreneurs.

Failure is something the business writer and chairman of Risk Capital Partners, Luke Johnson, has written about and must have had further cause to reflect on following his injection of £20 million into Patisserie Valerie, which recently announced that it was in danger of imminent collapse after what may turn out to have been the subject of accounting and auditing...