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JUST as the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) was launching its consultation on the draft International Integrated Reporting Framework in London, the European Commission was pushing in Brussels for large companies to disclose information on social and environmental matters.

The European Union’s internal market Commissioner Michel Barnier tabled on April 16 an amendment to the EU’s fourth (78/660/EEC) and seventh (83/349/EEC) directives on annual and consolidated accounts.…

SUCCESSION issues are a significant and growing challenge for companies and could be an opportunity for qualified accountants who may step up internally or be drafted in to even become the next CEO or CFO.

“Many businesses spend very little time, if any, thinking through who will lead the various aspects of their business in the future,” said Karen Young, a director for the senior finance section of global recruitment experts Hays, and whose remit includes qualified accountancy jobs including finance director, financial controller, management accountant, financial accountant, or practice accounting.…

A SLOW revolution in the use of biomass for firing or co-firing power generation is picking up pace this year as a number of competing technologies for the production of ‘biocoal’ move more convincingly towards full commercialisation.

Biocoal produced through torrefaction – in which dry biomass such as wood, paper, food waste and even sewerage waste is slow-heated anoxically (to avoid combustion) at 200C to 300C to reduce moisture and drive off low-energy volatile chemicals – offers slightly degraded fuel with lower emissions and carbon footprints (it is carbon neutral) than traditional biomass and, certainly, than coal.…

TO listen to opposing sides in a polarised debate, February 14, 2013, could go down in European business history as a St Valentine’s Day Massacre of Europe’s capital markets or as the start of a beautiful love affair with regulation that could help to prevent speculative trading turning boom to bust.…

THE ANNUAL conference of the European University Association (EUA) has debated how rankings systems need to become more sophisticated benchmarks as the higher education system worldwide becomes more internationalised.

Speaking to University World News after last week’s event in Ghent, Belgium, Ms Lesley Wilson, the EUA’s Secretary General, said that while “everyone has a different view” about rankings, they need to deliver sophisticated benchmarking systems with which institutions will be able to compare themselves against other learning bodies.…

IRELAND has the most higher education graduates per head of population in all 27 countries of the European Union (EU), a report from EU statistical agency Eurostat has revealed.

Looking at the proportion of people aged 30-34 who had completed tertiary education, Eurostat said in 2012, 51.1% of Ireland residents had degrees.…

A new report on global university rankings by the European Universities Association (EUA)  confirms what most HE heads will have known or suspected for some time: the dramatic growth in the number and scope of rankings tables in recent years has begun to shape the actual ways in which higher education is now developing world-wide.…

EUROPEAN Union (EU) anti-fraud agency OLAF has denied it used illegal wire taps to collect evidence in the case of former EU health Commissioner John Dalli, who resigned last year over conflict of interest allegations involving tobacco company Swedish Match.

Dalli, from Malta, had been accused of allowing a Maltese entrepreneur to offer the Swedes influence with the Commission via a lobbyist, so their smokeless snus tobacco products could be legalised within a current review of the EU tobacco products directive.…

LABELLING wines and spirits with European Union (EU) geographic indications (GIs) adds value, a study published March 4 by the European Commission has confirmed.

Analysis of the EU name protection scheme for agri-food found that, on average, GI designated products were estimated to sell at 2.23 times the value of non-GI ones.…

WITH mobile communication service providers facing an increasingly complex but growing market, they are being offered a range of third party services to help navigate a path to maximum profitability in this new commercial world. And with consumers using multiple devices and switching between data, video and voice, it is useful not only to be supplied software systems that helps make sense of this communications Babel, but to be advised and helped along the way.…