By John Griffith-Jones, UK Chairman of KPMG LLP

When the European Union launched its plans to reform the audit market across 27 countries, the proposals referenced the word ‘quality’ no less than 113 times. Robust audits were held to be the key to re-establishing trust and market confidence following the 2008 financial crisis.

By Oliver Tant, UK Head of Audit

I was interested to hear last week that the team behind New Scientist have launched a journal, Arc, focussing on what science and science-fiction can tell us about the future.  The editor of the first edition, Simon Ings, wrote in his blog: “We wanted to get past sterile ‘visions’ and dream up futures that evoke textures and flavours and passions.”  At a time when the professional services industry, in particular the auditing profession, is contemplating an uncertain future, I share Simon Ing’s desire to stimulate an appetising discussion on what lies ahead.  Here are some of the issues I’m aiming to look at in more depth in future blog posts:

By John Griffith-Jones, UK Chairman
I thought I would take the liberty of using our new leadership comment page to make some predictions for 2012. I should hasten to add that these are not based on an expert economic assessment but rather on the gut feel I have at the helm of one of the Big 4 accounting firms. I look forward to receiving other views.