Public Seminar 'Negotiating European Community Law. Personal experiences shared'

Tuesday 27 October 2009, 1:00-2:00pm
at Room 212, Level 2, 234 Queensberry Street, The University of Melbourne

presented by

Gordon Innes

(British Foreign and Commonwealth Office)

NB. This seminar was conducted under Chatham House rules, therefore no audio recordng is available.

Bio & Abstract:

Gordon Innes is a senior civil servant and lawyer with the British Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and, more recently, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is also an alumnus of the University of Melbourne. Following the bankruptcy of Enron and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen, Gordon was appointed Director in the Department's Corporate Law and Governance Team, with responsibility for accounting and audit policies. His team developed and implemented reforms on financial reporting and statutory audit. They also negotiated “post-Enron” standards for the EU capital markets to enhance public trust in the audit function. The output was an EU Directive on statutory audit of annual accounts and consolidated accounts (2006/43/EC).

In this seminar, Gordon will discuss the process of negotiating the directive from the perspective of a member state with more qualified accountants than the rest of the European Union combined. In particular, he will discuss the decision making process, procedures, etiquettes, negotiating skills and techniques.