Full of beans

I was taken by this letter in the paper earlier in the year. sent by Gareth Tarr of Chertsey:

Sir, as a chartered accountant I must say that the scandal regarding tax avoidance schemes is a rare case of positive PR for my profession. Rather than condescendingly being labelled as dreary 'bean-counters' we are now described as clever and innovative. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Harry Potter and the Balance Sheet

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a boy called Harry Potter, whose uncle told him he was a liability. But the boy felt unwilling to accept this designation without qualification, since his parents were off-balance sheet, ie, missing.

One day, a strange visitor named Hagrid gave the boy professional advice. “This advice is provided to you without prejudice,” he said. “Your fortunes may go up or they may go down. But due diligence requires me to inform you that you are not a liability of the muggle class, but an asset of the wizard class.”

The young asset travelled to Hogwart’s School for a set of “add value” courses expected by analysts to cause a significant appreciation in his book value.

In class, Harry met a female asset called Hermione and thought about having a merger with her. But he was distracted because an outside party called Voldemort earmarked him for 100 per cent depreciation, ie, death.

A huge takeover battle followed, with Voldemort attempting a hostile acquisition followed by a total liquidation of Harry and associated assets. Harry won by using an unlisted extraordinary item called heroism.

In a huge EGM of interested parties at Hogwarts Hall, Harry found that his book value had increased considerably. However, there was no merger with Hermione. “Also, I haven’t found my parents, who are still listed as receivables,” Harry said. As a result, analysts suggested that there may be room for subsidiary or spin-off adventures.

As imagined by Nury Sam Jam Vittachi

MGO are "Proud to be boring accountants"

Boring may be Optional but MGO, a top 100 accounting firm in Sacramento, California, celebrate the fact that they (claim to be) Boring. And have been for 25 years. They explain how being Boring benefits clients, they introduce their Boring Partners and have a self proclaimed Boring Mission.

Of course in so doing they stand out as being very different and anything BUT Boring. Nice one!

[EDIT: This post dates back to 2012. The online refs to MGO as boring accountants seemed to stop shortly thereafter. There is so such reference on their current website in 2023 ;-)]

He would have been a true financial wizard

Back when I was Chairman of the ICAEW Tax Faculty I was also on Council. I well recall that during one Council conference we discussed what the Institute could do to make chartered accountancy more sexy and appealing as a career option.

One of the best suggestions I can recall was to encourage a then relatively new author, JK Rowling, to change the direction of a series of books she was writing about a boy wizard. 

We thought it would be great if we could encourage her to end the series with Harry Potter graduating from Hogwarts and going off to start a career as a chartered accountant. We thought that might inspire thousands of potential financial wizards to follow his lead.  

I haven't read the last book but It didn't happen did it? Can you imagine what would have transpired?