2018 Business Links Seminars

Information about Business Links seminars held in 2018.

CAGTR & XRB Business Links seminar: “Good behaviour vs good performance: An update on international ethics”

13 November 2018 from 5.30 pm - 7.00 pm

In today’s world of enterprise, has the pendulum swung too much in favour of performance at the cost of appropriate behaviour?

The public are placing an ever-increasing set of behavioural and ethical requirements on professionals and leaders. This seminar looked at this question through the lenses of:

  • An international ethics standard setter;
  • A  NZ based academic focusing on ethical leadership; and
  • A NZ accounting practitioner, implementing new ethical requirements in the audit profession.

Panelists

Stavros Thomadakis, Chair, International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants

Dr. Stavros B. Thomadakis was appointed independent Chairman of the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants in 2015. He is Emeritus Professor of financial economics at the University of Athens and has authored many scholarly articles and books. His research interests include market regulation, standard setting, and other infrastructures for the governance of global markets, corporate governance in the private and public sectors, valuation models, financial history and crises, and the evolution of regulatory arrangements for markets and banks. In earlier years he has chaired the Hellenic Capital Market Commission, the IOSCO European Regional Committee and the Public Interest Oversight Board and served as member of the Securities and Markets Stakeholders Group of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). His PhD is from the Sloan School of Management, MIT.

Karin Lasthuizen, Brian Picot Chair in Ethical Leadership, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Karin Lasthuizen is the inaugural Brian Picot Chair in Ethical Leadership at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Karin’s research and consultancy work focus on ethical leadership and ethics management in public and private sector organisations. She specialises in methodology for research into organisational unethical behaviours (OUB) such as corruption and fraud. Karin is co-founder of the international academic research network on public and political leadership (PUPOL) and she is Chair of the Ethics Committee of Transparency International New Zealand. She has published extensively on leadership, ethics management, corruption and policing in national and international journals and books. Karin was previously at VU University Amsterdam and also worked part time as a City Councillor for the Dutch Labour party (PvdA) in her home city Arnhem.

Grant Taylor, Managing Partner (Wellington), Ernst & Young

Grant Taylor is a senior Assurance partner at EY and is the Wellington Managing Partner. He specialises in providing pragmatic financial management and assurance related advice to clients in a variety of sectors including private equity, financial services and listed corporate and public sector entities. He works with businesses in New Zealand across a number of sectors including energy, aged care and public sector. He leads a number of EY's most complex audit engagements and has extensive experience providing quality assurance services to audit committees and senior management teams. Grant is a Member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration from Victoria University of Wellington and is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Accounting Governance and Taxation Research and the School of Accounting and Commercial Law.

CAGTR Business Links seminar - “Climate risk and balance sheets: How more disclosure might solve the climate change crisis”

9 October 2018 from 5.40 pm - 7.10 pm

Rutherford House, Lecture Theatre 2, 23 Lambton Quay, Wellington

Future claims against public and private enterprises in their role as contributors to damage from GMST (global mean surface temperature) and GSL (global sea level) rise will exceed tens of trillions of dollars. One critical and urgent question is who will pay and when. What should be the claims adjudication process? To work, a claims adjudication process must have information. My research considers efficient and equitable ways of obtaining this information – from markets, regulation, legislation? Relatedly, market instruments to transfer climate risk to others can only work well with informed traders. This too requires better and more information. Society will be served greatly with pathways to solve the information conundrum. So far in the United States, public and private enterprises and NGO standard setters are mostly diametrically opposed on a preferred policy to increase climate change risk disclosure.

About the speaker

Professor Paul Griffin is a leading international authority in accounting, financial information and disclosures. He has published over 70 articles in leading accounting and finance journals, five research monographs for the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and two case books on U.S. corporate financial reporting. His research has had a substantial impact on the profession. According to a study of influential articles, he is one of a small group whose articles are now classics in the field.  Paul's recent publications in accounting and auditing focus on relations between stock prices and greenhouse gas emissions, the informational role of short interest for corporate bond prices, and investors’ recognition of unburnable carbon on energy company balance sheets. His current research projects examine the impact of CSR performance ratings on analysts’ information costs, the effects of social norms on CSR disclosure, and how executive social networks affect earnings management. Professor Griffin recently served as co-editor of Accounting Horizons.  Paul is currently Distinguished Professor of Management at UC Davis having previously been at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He earned both his Ph.D. in accounting and his M.A. in operations research and economic theory from The Ohio State University in Columbus, while his undergraduate degree in accounting was earned at Victoria University of Wellington.