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The chair’s the thing

‘To have a chief executive or not to have a chief executive, that is the question never knowingly undersold.’

No one actually said that; it’s just our strained way of highlighting John Lewis’s decision to “scrap” (according to The Times) the role of CEO, after chair Jason Tarry took charge without the chief executive title.

Current chief exec Nish Kankiwala will revert to being a non-exec after two years in the hot seat (which was probably straight from the in-house collection and very comfy).

Since the departure of the previous chair, Dame Sharon White, keeping tabs on the John Lewis leadership can sometimes feel like trying to stay up to date with the changing faces in the Tory Party leadership—though, it has to be said, with much better customer service.

Anyway, mangled Shakespeare aside, leadership choices at the employee-owned department store are important, given its custom of having the chair (the leader of the board, not the comfy statement piece) in charge.

Deputy board chair and nomco chief Rita Clifton, says: “We created the CEO role at the beginning of 2023 because of the scale of the transformation and intense level of commercial focus needed in such unprecedented market circumstances.”

A great divide

It’s official: the Big Four audit firms have achieved “operational separation”. The UK’s audit watchdog says so.

Separation, you may recall, was one of the recommendations made as part of the UK’s now half a decade trying to reform audit, auditors and the audit market.

It means key bits of the firms, like tax or consulting, have been restructured so they are no longer able to hobnob or influence the public interest bit, namely audit.

Sarah Rapson, exec director of supervision at the Financial Reporting Council, says: “The FRC is pleased with the spirit in which the firms have embraced operational separation and the progress achieved to date.

“Since 2020 there have been notable improvements in audit quality at the Big Four which has been underpinned by wider regulatory improvements.” It was all worth it, guys.

Know future for negotiations

Artificial intelligence can do anything (I’d like to see it understand my energy bills—Ed) and, according to one expert, it will now bring to an end to the thorny process of corporate negotiations.

Executives love a bit of haggling—proves their value (at least to themselves). But one Horst Eidenmüller, a professor of commercial law at the University of Oxford, says the toing and froing of bargaining is no more.

“Large companies will be better informed about relevant factors than their opponents and they will have more sophisticated AI tools at their disposal.” He adds that they will “automate the negotiation process”, leaving their opponents with few choices. “In essence,” says Eidenmüller, “their opponents will be able to choose how they are checkmated. Game over.”

The price of shares (and likes)

Over in the US, the audit profession seems to be in crisis. Can’t get enough young ‘uns.

The Financial Times reports that Big Four-firm KPMG wants the US to do away with the need for the “fifth” year of higher education that auditors are currently required to undertake before they can qualify. This should make it quicker and cheaper to move people into the profession.

Paul Knopp, KPMG’s US chief, tells the FT: “We have a brewing crisis right now, with the number of students going to college and number going into accounting, and we need to absolutely address it in the very near term.”

Board Agenda can’t help but notice that while the number of accounting recruits is in crisis, the number of US Instagram influencers has risen from 2.5% of the social media platform’s user base in 2020 to 9.8% in 2023. You literally can’t get young people to put their phones down long enough to learn a profession as stimulating as audit.

Maybe the KPMG audit team needs its own Insta outlet?

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