Financial Times: Call to UK companies on risk controls
By Jane Croft, Retail Banking Correspondent, in London
May 25, 2004
All UK listed companies may soon be required to demonstrate the quality of their internal controls to their auditors for the first time, according to new proposals.
The Financial Services Authority, which is the UK’s financial regulator, believes auditors should be required to review 10 key audit and accountability areas included in the UK’s Combined Code on Corporate Governance.
The most important of these will be reviewing a company’s internal risk controls, which measure the reliability of a company’s financial reporting and risk management.
The FSA, which has responsibility as the listing authority to ensure companies comply with the corporate governance code, said its latest proposal came after a series of high-profile corporate failures in Europe and the US.
It said it wanted investors to be clear which areas of the Combined Code were subject to auditor review.
Earlier this year Royal Dutch/Shell became the latest company to admit its internal controls had been deficient after it was forced to admit it had been overstating its oil and gas reserves by 20 per cent.
A report into the Shell scandal by Davis Polk & Wardell, the US law firm, said overbooking reserves was possible only “because of certain deficiencies in the company’s controls”.
The FSA, which is seeking feedback from the industry on the proposals, believes the changes will not impose “incremental costs on issuers of more than minimal significance”.
In the US, regulators already require auditors to check the internal controls of companies they audit.
The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 significantly added to auditors’ responsibility on internal controls and increases the chances that regulators will punish them for oversight failures.
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
