Martin Moloney, Secretary General of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions, outlines his priorities for the year ahead Irishman Martin Moloney is Secretary General of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). Headquartered in Madrid, Spain, the international body brings together the world’s securities regulators and is recognised as the standard setter for the securities sector worldwide. IOSCO develops, implements, and promotes adherence to internationally recognised standards for securities regulation, working closely with the G20 and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on global regulatory reform. Accountancy Ireland sat down with Moloney to discuss his goals, priorities, and concerns for the year ahead. Q: What are the biggest risks facing investors around the world right now and how is IOSCO working with securities regulatory agencies to address these risks? The risks that investors face never really change. There are some fundamentals. You can hire the wrong advisers, you can pay them too much, you can choose the wrong times to get in or out of markets, and you can invest in the wrong things. These risks are the core risks for investors, and they have been for as long as financial markets have existed. The difficulty is that financial markets are constantly changing. New asset classes like crypto are emerging, and there are new ways in which intermediaries work on your behalf, but also earn fees for themselves. This creates new risks for investors. Also, as we saw from recent events in the UK, markets can go into sudden periods of stress and crash. We do our best, working with others, to try to make markets as resilient as they can be, to ensure that these episodes are few and far between insofar as we can. These are the big issues facing us currently. Really, it all comes down to integrity—being able to trust the price you see when you invest in the markets and ensuring that you are not being fooled by people who are trying to cheat you out of your money. Q: You have described the rise of cryptocurrency as an area fraught with risk, requiring “a lot of work” on the part of regulators. Can you tell us more? There is no doubt in my mind that we have reached a turning point in relation to crypto. This is not because of the so-called ‘Crypto Winter’. The value of crypto might go up or down, but that is not really the issue. The point that we all have to observe and recognise is that crypto has survived and has continued to survive over a number of years. It is reasonable to assume that it is not going away and, therefore, it has to be regulated. I am delighted to say that, since I have joined IOSCO, the organisation has moved forward with its policy in this area and is now very quickly developing a set of guidelines for the market on how different jurisdictions should regulate crypto and the common standards they should aim to achieve in doing so. We are seeing a number of regions, notably the United States and Europe, now moving towards developing legal frameworks. I have no doubt that this is far from the end of the matter, however—it is just the beginning. Crypto is going to evolve and change as people get on top of the technology and new opportunities emerge. The most important thing we must all keep an eye on here is the outcome for the investor. In the first years of crypto, a huge number of people lost money through fraud. Other people, who may not even have been aware of it, lost money through market manipulation, insider trading and various other dubious activities we know well. Very often, this has been driven by conflicts of interest. If you dig down into the principles articulated by IOSCO for financial markets many years ago, you will find us warning against many of the phenomena we are now seeing in crypto markets. Theft does not change. It might happen in a different location, but theft is still theft. Bad management is still bad management, no matter where it happens. It is up to us to re-articulate these very simple, but really important, ideas and explain how they can apply in the crypto space. It is also important for the crypto sector itself to come up with good solutions and technologically enabled solutions, so that its work can be supervised and that it can reach the same standard of regulation as the rest of the financial sector. There are a number of individuals, I think, within the crypto sector who have come to understand that they need to move positively towards a strong regulatory framework in order to bottom out their businesses and remain stable. If we do not start to see self-regulation within the crypto sector, then I think we will see more jurisdictions banning crypto. It is just not sustainable over the medium term to try to avoid the regulatory frameworks that apply to everyone else. It is one thing to see yourself as a different asset class. It’s quite another to see yourself as an entirely different industry when you are effectively doing the same thing. Q: So, you do believe that cryptocurrency has a long-term future provided that there is robust regulation in place across the board? I think there is some potential for this asset class, but it is going to become more challenging. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I try not to predict the future. I see some very interesting new products developing in the decentralised finance space, and I wonder if this is ultimately where crypto is going to go. We are all used to a simple model in which you get quite non-functional assets like Bitcoin being traded and people making money primarily out of the bubbles in Bitcoin. The use cases for crypto continue to be worked on extensively, however. So, every time you have one of those bubbles, what is actually happening is that money is being raised to allow people to invest in new potential use cases. There are now so many use cases that have come and gone, and failed ideas that have been touted and promoted, you could be forgiven for thinking that there are no use cases left for crypto—but that is probably wrong. I think people will continue trying to figure out good use cases for crypto. I don’t think it’s going away any time soon. Q: You have spoken recently about the greenwashing risk facing securities regulators—what can be done to address this? We put out a couple of reports in 2021 where we looked at the greenwashing issue in great detail, listing the different ways in which this phenomenon occurs. We had to acknowledge, however, that it is not just about ‘evil intent’. Activity that might be described as greenwashing often happens, because the market structures needed to adequately support sustainable finance are not yet in place. Sometimes, you do get people who are frankly trying to fool investors by issuing misleading information, but, equally, the markets as they stand are just not built for sustainable financing. Having identified the problem and having asked the industry to work as hard as possible to reduce the amount of greenwashing that now exists, we have had to acknowledge that the system itself needs to change. Regulators have to do it, governments have to do it, standard-setters have to do it—to create a better system to achieve true sustainable finance. If, for example, I am proposing an investment that has a strong impact in terms of reducing carbon emissions, I should get a better price on the market and a better investment price for that security than someone who comes to market with a security for a carbon-emitting project. We want the market to be sensitive to the environmental impact of different proposals, companies and products. They must have access to information that is reliable; that has been independently audited; and that brokers can bring together to compare stocks from different parts of the world and determine differential pricing based on their impact on the environment. Getting all of this right would be an incredibly hard job, so we have broken the job down into a number of elements. We will be progressively working on putting these building blocks in place over the next couple of years, in order to make sure that the process can be regulated and that people who don’t do the right thing can be held to account on the basis that they could have done the right thing and chose not to. Q: As the move to establish standards for environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting gathers pace, what is your take on the current efforts underway? We have a very close relationship with the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). We effectively oversee its work and, if we like what it is doing, we will endorse its standards, and recommend those standards to individual regulatory securities agencies around the world, so that these jurisdictions can adopt the standards as they see fit. The fundamental issue we are all facing is that a sustainable financial marketplace has to be a global marketplace. If you have fragmentation and you don’t have the same information sets available in different parts of the world, you cannot have a true comparison between different securities, and capital cannot flow to the best projects. It is no good for anyone if Europe is pristine, while the rest of the world is working in a different way. What happens in the Amazonian rainforest matters to all of us. Capital, therefore, has to flow from those places where it is abundant, such as Europe and North America, to locations in which the opportunities exist to do the right thing. What IOSCO has said to the countries we work with around the world is, “do this any way you want, but use the ISSB standards as a baseline and build your own approach on that foundation”. Put simply, you can do all you want in the ESG space, but unless we have a common core, we cannot create a global financial market that will bring about any real change. Q: Can you tell us about the work you are doing with the Financial Stability Board in relation to investment funds? This is a very big project for us. Investment funds are a crucial mechanism all around the world for people to get access to markets on a collective basis, but they can have a concerning impact on markets in periods of crisis. We have been doing work in this area since 2016. We have done a lot already, but there is more to do. A major focus for us next year will be trying to make sure that the kind of funds both ordinary individual investors and the more risk-averse institutional investors choose are safe in a crisis. We are trying to ensure that, if you are investing in a product that is riskier, it will be clear to you that it is more difficult to get your money out of it; that these kinds of investment funds are not the equivalent of a bank account. This is a typical example of what we do, but there are lots of others. We do a lot of work on cyber-resilience, and we are also very interested in the change in the behaviour of retail investors and their vulnerability to scams. One of the problems we face at the moment is that, while technology has made it easy or cheap for people to invest in the markets, it has also made it easy or cheap for fraudsters to get at many thousands of people. We need to figure out better and better ways to stop these fraudsters and prevent them in their designs. About Martin Moloney Prior to joining IOSCO as Secretary General in September 2021, Martin Moloney was Director General of the Jersey Financial Services Commission and, before that, he worked as a Special Adviser on Risk and Regulation to the Central Bank of Ireland, where he served for 16 years, previously heading up the Markets Policy, Markets Supervision, and Legal and Finance Divisions. Moloney began his early career working in industry with Barclays Bank and Bank of Ireland in London, before returning to Ireland to work with the Department of Justice, Department of Finance, the Irish Competition Authority. Born in Dublin, he has a master’s degrees in Business Law and Economic Policy, both from Trinity College Dublin.

Elaine Coughlan, one of Ireland’s most successful venture capital investors, tells us how her experience in accountancy and audit led to a high-flying career in technology Since qualifying as a Chartered Accountant and cutting her teeth in audit in the 1990s, just as the first wave of tech entrepreneurs in Ireland were beginning to access US capital markets, Elaine Coughlan has carved out an illustrious career in venture capital. Dublin-born Coughlan is the co-founder and joint Managing Partner of Atlantic Bridge, the global growth technology fund with more than €1 billion in assets under management across nine funds. For Coughlan, her career is a testament to both her training in finance and the power of human connection in business the world over. “Atlantic Bridge has over 35 companies we have successfully sold or ‘IPOed’ and I am immensely proud of that,” she says. “The wins drive you on because you can see what’s possible and those Irish entrepreneurs become role models for the next generation. I’m proud of the assets we have under management, and that Atlantic Bridge now has people in Dublin, London, Paris, Munich and Palo Alto in Silicon Valley. That is a truly global footprint, and it really helps us to scale our companies.” Early connections Coughlan credits the professional connections she made at an early stage in her career at Ernst & Young with setting her on the path to professional success. “Some of the people I met back in the nineties, our clients at the time, were hugely influential on me,” she says. Among those clients was Smurfit (now Smurfit Kappa), already a long-established industry leader in paper packaging production. “I was seconded from Ernst & Young to work with Smurfit when it was probably the number one Irish company in terms of market capitalisation and really blazing a trail in Irish business,” she says. “It is still a phenomenal company today, but for me at that time, Smurfit was just so ambitious and far-reaching in its approach to mergers and acquisitions, and the capital markets. I worked on fundraising and acquisitions with them and had early exposure to some of their senior executives—people like Gerry Fagan, their then-CFO.” Coughlan forged other crucial connections at the time with Bill McCabe, founder of CBT, the e-learning group, and Iona Technologies’ Chris Horn. “Bill and Chris were the first entrepreneurs in Ireland to float tech companies on the Nasdaq and, if you look at what they had in common with Smurfit, it was really that they were all entrepreneurial,” she says now. Coughlan would leave Ernst & Young to join Iona ahead of the company’s Initial Public Offering. “I knew then that practice probably wasn’t for me. That’s not to say that you can’t be entrepreneurial in practice, but the cut and thrust of the tech business pulled me in,” she says. “I remember traveling over to the US with CBT back in 1993 and that was it for me. There was such a sense of possibility.” Coughlan went on to join Parthus, the semiconductor IP company co-founded by Brian Long, and the pair formed an abiding partnership, co-founding both Atlantic Bridge and GloNav, the GPS company acquired in 2007 for $110 million. “All these years later, I am still in business with the same people, and they were the people that had an impact on me starting out. They were the people I learned from and the people who were generous with their time and their knowledge, and willing to give me experience and opportunities,” she says. For young Chartered Accountants starting out in their career, Coughlan has this advice: “Above all else, nurture your connections. These young professionals will already be well-qualified and proven in their ability and resilience, because training to become a Chartered Accountant is challenging in itself,” she says. “The question they have to ask themselves is ‘what differentiates me beyond that?’ It comes down to being able to combine your knowledge with strong relationships in ways that bring about better outcomes.” As Coughlan sees it, building solid sustainable relationships in business isn’t simply a case of networking and ‘transactional interactions’. “It’s about finding people who share your values and ethics, whose accomplishments and abilities you admire, and who have the ability to lead and inspire. You always have to be thinking long-term, not just about your next connection on LinkedIn,” she says. Supporting start-ups Coughlan’s commitment to supporting start-ups and advancing Ireland as a leading hub for technology development was recognised at this year’s Irish Accountancy Awards, at which she won the prize for outstanding contribution to the profession. “When we started Atlantic Bridge in 2004, we wanted to help tech companies in Ireland to scale successfully. Ireland is a small island and a small economy, so there are two things tech companies here need to scale—they need to move beyond the island to reach customers and they need access to capital,” she says. “We wanted to cross the Atlantic to the US, because it is the largest market in the world in terms of customers and capital markets. At the time, Ireland had a VC market of less than €100 million. It’s 10 times that size now, but back then, it was really small.” The primary focus for Atlantic Bridge today continues to be “deep tech” innovators in the business-to-business (B2B) space. “We’re not after instant gratification or overnight success. These are businesses with defensible research-intensive technologies that are primed to scale when the time is right,” says Coughlan. “Our investors are patient. They are looking for strong long-term returns, and we are very proud to have reached the stage where we have raised nine funds, because that is not an easy thing to do in this industry.” Coughlan warns, however, that we are entering a “new investment cycle”, in which surging inflation, rising interest rates, and the risk of recession, are all making investors more risk averse. “The outlook for Atlantic Bridge in the short-term will be cautious and tactical, but beyond that, we are optimistic and deeply committed to the technology trends we are seeing today that will make a difference in the future,” she says. “A lot of the technologies we’re investing in now are in climate change action—low-power, low-carbon enablers—and in medical technology and the digitisation of health, where we can meet unmet needs. We’re focusing on technologies like Artificial Intelligence and semiconductors—the fundamental building blocks that will be built into new products over the next three to five years.” Research and development As the economy enters uncertain terrain, Coughlan is urging the Government to continue investing in research and development (R&D). “Ireland has to continue to invest in R&D. We need to hold our nerve in continuing to invest in the best and brightest people and start-ups, because they will drive the next generation of growth,” she says. “Today, we are investing about 1.25 percent of GDP in R&D. We need to get that up to between 2.5 percent and three percent. The future economy will be knowledge-intensive and that requires knowledge-intensive people.” Coughlan is equally committed to the advancement of her profession, and proud of her own achievements as a Chartered Accountant. “The ‘bean counter’ perception is one too many people have of accountants, but I would probably be the last person you’d ask to do a P&L statement,” she says. “I can tell you if it is right or wrong though, because I understand the numbers and what they mean. I can interrogate and interpret any set of numbers and that is because I am a Chartered Accountant. All business now is run on data and our profession gives us a really strong grounding in using data to make decisions—and that is the future. “There are doors that are opened to you when you train as an accountant. You learn about process, structure, deadlines, and relationships. All of these skills are incredibly important. “You come out of it battle-hardened and resilient, and with all these options: to stay in practice; to focus on technical work; to go into consultancy; financial services; or business and entrepreneurship. The opportunities are phenomenal.” Growing up in Beaumont in north Dublin in the recession-hit 1980s, however, Coughlan had envisaged a different career for herself. It was a chance encounter that set her on the path to accountancy and a high-flying career in venture capital. Early career path “I was good at numbers at school and I studied accountancy for the Leaving Cert, but I wouldn’t say I was destined to be an accountant. I fully recognise now that it was my accountancy and audit experience that led me into the technology industry, but my real interest growing up was people,” she says. “I wanted to work in a people-focused environment, so I applied to study marketing and languages at DCU and went for a summer job at a small accountancy firm to keep me going in the meantime.” Coughlan didn’t get the summer job, but she was contacted by her interviewer and urged instead to consider accountancy as a full-time career. “It was 1989, unemployment in Ireland was something like 15 percent and so many people were emigrating to find work in the UK and the US,” she says. “I didn’t know anything about becoming a Chartered Accountant, but I wrote to the Institute and was offered a training contract with Ernst & Young. Here was this opportunity to have my fees paid and earn a wage with guaranteed work in a really tough economy. It was a great deal. That’s why I always say to this day, ‘what’s meant for you won’t pass you by’.”

With the launch of ‘The Garage’, Pfizer Global Business Services Dublin is helping accounting trainees discover how they can apply digital technology to make their work faster and easier It started with a conversation between colleagues about how their profession might evolve at a time of immense digital transformation, and how they might harness this transformative power to support their fast-growing Dublin enterprise. Aoife Allen, FCA and Senior Director with Pfizer Global Business Services Dublin (GBS Dublin) recalls: “It was three years ago, and we were thinking about how we would be working in the future. I remember the question was, ‘what will our future colleague look five or 10 years from now?’” At the time, Albert Bourla, Chair and CEO of Pfizer Inc, had set a challenge for the organisation globally to “win the digital race in pharma,” and Allen and her colleague John Anglim were overseeing a successful graduate programme for Pfizer GBS Dublin in association with Chartered Accountants Ireland. “Our graduate programme was really starting to ramp-up then, in terms of numbers—a cohort of younger colleagues who had grown up with digital technologies, and we wanted to find a way to help them explore how we could use digital technology to make our own processes more efficient and effective, with an enhanced control environment.” ‘The Garage’ – a digital innovation program So began ‘The Garage’, a one-hour weekly session, during which Chartered Accountant trainees were encouraged to explore how they might use digital technologies to make their work more efficient and easier to manage. “We challenged them to come up with a project idea, and then to build it. It was about teaching our graduates how to think differently and pass their learnings on to the wider organisation, so that we could harness the power of digital to improve how we worked together within the organisation,” John Anglim, Director, Pfizer GBS Dublin, explains. The Garage is an innovative applied learning program, developed and led by Pfizer GBS Dublin colleagues Colin Byrnes, Director of Global Process Transformation, and Lorna Flanagan, Director Statutory Reporting CoE. Nurturing the digital mindset “The idea behind the program was really about recognising a need to nurture and develop our graduates’ skill sets in working with digital tools and technologies as they progress through their accountancy training,” Colin Byrnes explains. “Our Garage sessions take our graduates through concepts such as design thinking, analytics and problem-solving, as well as introductions to some of the technologies we use, like Alteryx, Tableau, Dataiku and Power Automate.” As Lorna Flanagan sees it, The Garage is about equipping the accountant of today for their evolving role as the ‘accountant of the future’. “The role of the accountant has really moved on from repetitive tasks to providing higher value-add services,” she says. “Our hope is that The Garage will set our graduates up to support problem-solving at Pfizer GBS and also enhance their accountancy training experience, so that we can support them to become our ‘colleague of the future’.” Impressive results So far, The Garage has yielded impressive results, with participants using new technologies, like Robotic Process Automation, Visualisation and Predictive Analytics, to build innovative solutions for Pfizer GBS Dublin and the wider organisation. One such participant is Reza Shahrokhi, as Aoife Allen explains: “Reza’s project concerned an incredibly time-consuming process that was used by managers right across Pfizer to review Authorised Signature Limits (ASLs). “Every year, these managers had to coordinate the review of thousands of ASLs on large Excel files via email. It was an incredibly time-consuming and manual process and, through his participation in Garage, Reza found a solution that was adapted for use across the entire organisation.” Shahrokhi’s solution used Power Automate, a tool that integrates Microsoft applications such as Excel, Outlook, Teams and more, to simplify the ASL review process. “He effectively removed emails from the process, collating responses from managers in seconds and automatically updating files, reducing errors and time for follow-up,” explains Flanagan. “Reza presented his project to GBS Dublin leaders and departments, showcasing his work at a GBS Dublin Innovation Forum where he was awarded one of 10 Innovation Awards in 2021. Reza really exemplified the Pfizer goal to win the digital race in pharma by making our work faster and easier. He explored and defined the problem and leveraged technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a manual process.” Automating journal entries Another successful Garage project by graduate trainee Kate Connell leveraged digital technology to automate the manual month-end journal entry process. “Kate’s project explored a recurring issue whereby a manual journal had to be booked monthly to reclass original banking entries in the SAP accounting system to certain division- or market-coded accounts,” Lorna Flanagan explains. “The process was taking two hours to post manually each month. By navigating and preparing a ‘process flow map’ and exploring the functionality of the Alteryx tool, Kate was able to apply a digital workflow to automate the preparation of the final journal.” Connell’s project was showcased to GBS Dublin leadership and, as a result, different departments were able to leverage the technology to automate repetitive manual journal entries. Digital workflow solution Ian Banahan, meanwhile, used his participation in Garage to identify a digital workflow solution for an important financial supply chain process. “Graduates who take part in The Garage are asked to identify a work activity they see as relatively simple but feel could be improved. The idea is to create a ‘focus’ for practical learning during the Garage sessions,” explains Colin Byrnes. “In his day-to-day work, Ian was involved in a process whereby the GBS Dublin team calculates and communicates critical financial information to country teams supporting the financial global supply chain and distribution of products. “While the process was robust and utilised the latest digital technologies to help calculate processes, Ian could see that there was still a lot of manual communication involved—via emails, for example.” As part of his Garage project, Banahan documented the flow of information exchange involved in the process, uncovering challenges with information tracking and management. “Ian used the Garage network to identify digital workflow tools that could potentially address these issues, assessed them and drafted recommendations. He presented his findings to GBS Dublin leadership and got approval to move ahead with the project,” says Byrnes. “Since then, the Global Process Lead responsible for this area has developed the proposal further and the plan is to start implementing Ian’s solution by the end of this year.” The future of Garage Originally introduced in 2021, the 12-week Garage programme is now entering its third cycle and, for the first time, will be open to all Dublin GBS colleagues in addition to graduate trainees. For Aoife Allen, the success of the initiatives is a point of pride. “I am very proud of The Garage. A lot of the projects that have come out of it have brought real value to the organisation, and to our day-to-day work as Chartered Accountants and financial professionals,” she says. “These accounting problems and projects are so specific to the activities we are involved in that, really, only we can fully understand and solve them. “By giving our graduates—and now our wider team—the tools they need, they are able to look at accounting processes and say with confidence, ‘I can automate this process, and then spend my working time using the information it’s giving me to carry out work that is far more valuable. “They are effectively solving day-to-day end-user problems and that is empowering, because it encourages them to think differently about how they, and how we as an organisation, approach our activities.” History of innovation Pfizer has a deeply rooted history of innovation in Ireland. One of the first pharmaceutical companies to establish a base in Ireland, the organisation celebrated its 50th anniversary here in 2019 and now employs 4,000 people at five locations in Cork, Dublin, and Kildare. GBS Dublin was established in 2003 and provides end-to-end financial accounting services, compliance oversight, and business transformation support to Pfizer operations spanning 150 markets worldwide. As such, says Allen, GBS Dublin acts as Pfizer’s own ‘in-house’ accounting firm with the same high-value capability and talent resource. “That is how we see ourselves, and what we have responsibility for are the complex, high-risk and knowledge-based accounting transactions that support Pfizer’s financial operations globally as well as regionally here in Ireland,” she says. GBS Dublin is also among the biggest employers of Chartered Accountants in the Irish market outside the Big Four accounting firms. “We are very fortunate to have access to such a big pool of very talented candidates who have a really good reputation internationally,” Allen says. “We have a young, qualified, educated, and diverse workforce. We have many different nationalities here; people who speak many different languages; who have experience in different local Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. “This means that we are able to provide an international organisation with financial support from here in Dublin, and we also now manage in-market colleagues responsible for statutory and fiduciary duties.” Evolving role of the accountant For Allen, who grew up in Wexford and trained as a Chartered Accountant with PwC, her time with GBS Dublin has allowed her to carve out a varied and satisfying career path. “I joined GBS Dublin 16 years ago as an accountant after living and working in Australia for a while after qualifying. Since joining, I’ve changed roles eight times. I have had so many opportunities. “After joining as an accountant, I became team lead, and then regional team lead, and progressed from there to a director role and, most recently, senior director, with colleagues from 41 countries reporting into my organisation.” In the years since she began her own career, Allen has also borne witness to the evolving role of accountants in all sectors. “How we do our job on a day-to-day basis now is very different to how it was when I trained. Great change is underway within the profession of accountancy and that change is being driven by digital technologies,” she says. “We have access now to digital tools—not just these big Enterprise Resource Planning systems like SAP and Oracle—but also end-user technologies like Alteryx, Dataiku and Power Automate. These tools are allowing accountants to carry out our work in new and different ways and creating the potential for real innovation.” Breakthroughs that change lives This innovation is at the heart of the GBS Dublin ethos and the driving motivation behind The Garage and other digital initiatives. “We have an amazing wealth of talent here in our own workforce in Dublin and, at the same time, access to these emerging digital tools that can really transform the way they work and add value to the wider organisation,” says Allen. “We reckon about 75 percent of the people working for Pfizer GBS Dublin have a qualification in accountancy, tax, or another high-value profession. Our colleagues are highly qualified and highly capable people, and we are part of Pfizer; a company whose purpose is to drive ‘breakthroughs that change patients’ lives’.” “Our own purpose and responsibility here at GBS Dublin, as I see it, is to employ that same ethos as an enabling function to the wider organisation and—just as our colleagues in science and manufacturing do—to use innovation to drive breakthroughs. “Being a truly innovative organisation involves learning to do things differently, being open to change, and being prepared for a future of constant change.” For Allen, meanwhile, how she approaches her leadership role as a Senior Director at Pfizer Dublin GBS is also changing. “What I’m learning is that, as a leader, you have to get out of the way. You have to give people the space to come up with ideas and to share them. You have to ask everyone to contribute, to listen and encourage all of their ideas. “That means listening equally to everyone in a meeting, from graduate right up to director level. I want to hear what the graduate has to say as much as I want to hear what the director has to say. You must listen, because absolutely everyone can bring something really valuable to the table.”

Over the duration of a successful career as a Chartered Accountant, Suliyat Olalekan has learned the value of hard work, commitment and, above all, kindness From as far back as she can remember, Suliyat Olalekan wanted to become a Chartered Accountant. “I was really good at maths from a very young age and I was always very certain that I wanted to have a career as an accountant,” says Olalekan.  “I didn’t want to be an academic, studying mathematics or statistics in a university. I wanted to apply my skills in the real world. Accountancy seemed to me to offer a lot of possibilities, but I can’t say I had any real sense back then of what the role would actually involve day-to-day.” Born in southwestern Nigeria, Olalekan was raised in a tight-knit family in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State. One of five siblings, she moved to Ireland as a teenager, settling in south Dublin, and went on to study Leaving Cert Accounting.   Though Olalekan had “absolute conviction” about her career aspirations, acclimatising to the Irish way of life after relocating from Ibadan as a young teen came as a culture shock. “I found the education system in Ireland fantastic, but it was very different to the education I had experienced in Nigeria, which was highly academic,” she says.  “When I started secondary school in Ireland, I was ahead of the syllabus so it was an easy transition starting out. I was able to focus instead on integrating socially and learning about the culture and way of life in this new country that was so different.” Learning to adapt at a young age has stood to Olalekan over the course of an accomplished career as a Chartered Accountant that has taken her from practice to industry, and from Dublin to London. “It is so important to do your research in any profession. This is my go-to approach when I am considering a potential new role, or finding my feet in a new job, and it’s the reason I think I’ve been able to adapt well to new roles and responsibilities,” she says. “I reach out to people and lean into my network, so that I can find out as much as I can about a new role on offer—and not just the role itself, but the organisation, and the wider industry. The same goes for how I approach my work day-to-day. I always try to learn from other people who are experts in their role, their field, or sector.  “If I need advice on a tax issue, for example, I will go to a tax expert—and I never jump into anything. When I start a new job, I stand back and take stock of what is happening around me; what the dynamics are; how things work. I never dive in. I take my time and I do my research. This balanced approach has worked well for me in my career.” Now Chief Accountant at SFL Corporation, an international NYSE-listed maritime company, Olalekan manages a team in London and Oslo responsible for accounting and reporting on US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP).  She began her career in practice, training with Deloitte in Ireland after graduating from Dublin Business School in 2007 with a first-class honours degree in accounting and finance. “I knew I wanted to train with a ‘Big Four’ firm and I really enjoyed my time with Deloitte. Joining their Audit Graduate Programme was a really wonderful start to my career and they sponsored my Master of Accounting at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business. “From there, I went straight into the Final Admitting Examination (FAE) with Chartered Accountants Ireland in 2012 —and then I reached a point where I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do next.” Rather than mapping out a strict career plan, Olalekan instead decided to hang back and gain more experience where she was, before deciding on her next move.  “A lot of my friends and peers around that time were moving to Australia, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda — and thinking ahead to ‘what’s next?’ I was happy enough where I was though, so I stayed with Deloitte, moving from Audit Senior on to Assistant Manager and then Manager.” It was when Olalekan was offered a secondment with Bank of Ireland that she got her first taste of working life beyond practice. “I got this fantastic opportunity to see what it was like on the ‘other side’ working in capital investment, and I found I really enjoyed it,” she says. The experience prompted Olalekan to look further afield and, when she decided to relocate to London in 2014, she found herself open to a move into shipping – a sector she had no experience in at the time. “It was my brother who told me about this job as Group Reporting Manager with SFL Corporation and, straight away, I was intrigued,” she says. “I knew nothing about the maritime sector at the time, but shipping is such a traditional and tangible industry. I thought ‘that’s how food gets to my table and how furniture gets to my home’.  “SFL Corporation is also listed in the US, which meant I could get experience in US GAAP. I already had experience in UK GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Ireland. I thought US GAAP would be a challenge that would really stand to me.” Olalekan was promoted to her current role as Chief Accountant with SFL Corporation in London in 2017. “They have been very persuasive in keeping me, and I really enjoy the work I do here because it is just so interesting,” she says. “My day-to-day can go from journal approvals on really important qualitative items to filing statements to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR [Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval] system. “I’m involved in preparing financial data for press releases, and in constantly reviewing and ensuring the accuracy of the information we make available to the public. I advise our commercial and operational teams on the accounting implications of new business contracts and potential transactions. My role is so varied and I find that incredibly rewarding professionally.” As her career has progressed, Olalekan has settled into an open, approachable leadership style centred on building strong relationships with the people on her team, as well as those she reports to and colleagues in the wider organisation. “There are many ways you can approach leadership and different styles work for different people—but I have always leaned into genuine, positive relationships and that continues to work really well for me to this day. “I make sure that I am seen as a ‘can-do’ person; someone people won’t hesitate to approach to ask for help. This has been very beneficial because people know I don’t shy away from work and that I’m not afraid of challenges.  “In any new role, you can’t know everything straight away. That is what growing and learning as a professional is all about. If you are seen as a positive can-do person who can be relied on to work hard, it is more likely that you will be offered promotions because your managers will trust that, even if you are not 100 percent ready, you will rise to the occasion, learn, and do what is needed.” Approachability, and a willingness to help others and collaborate to solve problems, is equally important for managers who want to support, encourage, and get the best from the people on their team. “Just as my managers know they can trust me, my team learns the importance of trustworthiness from me. It creates a positive chain reaction,” says Olalekan.  “They know they can come to me with problems and challenges, and that means they are also more likely to come to me with ideas, insights and solutions that can benefit the business. That is very rewarding for me as a manager.” A mother to two young children, Olalekan still finds time outside her work and home commitments to support her profession. A committed member of the London Society of Chartered Accountants Ireland, she was among four members recently elected to Council. “I am honoured to have been elected and to have the opportunity to give something back to the profession that has been so good to me in my career,” she says. “We train people to be robust, to be intimate with numbers, to be able to analyse the data and make sense of the figures. You don’t need to be the CFO of a FTSE 100 to be a success in this profession.  “My own ambition now is to add value to the organisation I work for, and support the people I work with. Even though I was so sure so young that I wanted to be an accountant, I couldn’t have known then how fulfilling my career would turn out to be. I am exactly where I want to be.”  

Over the course of a successful 30-year career in international business, Shane Fitzsimons has refined a tried-and-tested approach to hitting the ground running in any new role. Now CFO and Executive Vice President at AIG Inc in the US, he talks us through the most important professional lessons he has learned over the years. “Keep your ears open, talk to people, pay attention to how things are done around you and adapt.”  For Shane Fitzsimons, the recently appointed Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President at American International Group (AIG) Inc, showing curiosity, trustworthiness and commitment to the business’ success really matters in any new role.  Over the course of a highly successful 30-year career in global business, Fitzsimons has refined a ‘go-to’ approach to hitting the ground running in a new position—no matter the business, industry or location. “In a lot of ways, you could say that getting off to the right start comes down to being a good listener. It’s important to go into any new situation with an open mind and be willing to learn about what’s around you,” he says. “Preconceptions will only ever get in the way and, when it boils down to it, people the world over generally share the same motivations. They want to know that they can trust you, that you can get things done, and that the success of the business is your number one priority.” Born in Belfast and raised in Cork, Fitzsimons has risen through the ranks at global companies like General Electric, Tata Group and now AIG over the course of a career that has taken him from Ireland to Europe, and on to the US, and Asia. Profound advice Every step of the way, he has continued to heed the “profound” advice he received at a pivotal point in his early years at General Electric while he was an analyst at the company’s headquarters in Connecticut. “I was about four months into this one-year assignment in Financial Planning and Analysis and I was gung-ho about the role, working 14- to 16-hour days, because here I was at the company’s corporate headquarters with the opportunity to be noticed by Jack Welch (then Chair and CEO of General Electric) and other senior people,” he says. “I wanted to demonstrate my commitment and my work ethic. Then, one day, the head of FP&A called me into his office. He’d noticed the long hours I’d been working. I was expecting praise.  “Instead, he sat me down and said: ‘I see you’re working these long hours and I’ve got to tell you: if you can’t manage the job I’ve given you in less than the working day, I can’t give you anything bigger to do.’” This advice has since become Fitzsimons’ guiding philosophy, he explains: “If you can’t take a job – even the most difficult job – boil it down, simplify it, and improve how it’s done, you’re not ready to move to a more senior role because you haven’t demonstrated a capacity to grow.” Productivity & performance That conversation prompted Fitzsimons to re-think his approach to productivity and performance.  “I had to reflect on how I could use my working time more effectively to do the job at hand while also getting to know other parts of the business. From that point onwards, I started to look at everything from the point-of-view of efficiency,” he says. “It was really quite profound. Even now with my team here at AIG, we have a major focus on supporting efficiency in the wider business.  “We obviously focus on the numbers—on traditional activities like accounting, treasury and tax—but we also see ourselves as an operational partner to the wider business with an important role to play in driving efficiency and supporting strategy and process improvement.” In this respect, Fitzsimons sees finance as an operational ‘enabler’ in business. “We play a very important role in control and governance, obviously, but we don’t see ourselves as the ‘checkers’,” he says.  “That’s why words like ‘expediting’ are so important to me – because finance is an enabler. Our role is really to help the wider business to be successful in the markets in which we operate.” Even at the earliest point in his career, Fitzsimons was already aware of the need to gain hands-on experience in the cut and thrust of the commercial world.  While completing his training with Chartered Accountants Ireland, he worked with Fitzsimons Flynn & Co., the practice run by his late father Garry, also a Chartered Accountant, from three locations in Cork city, Kinsale and Bandon. “I left Ireland pretty quickly. At the time, there weren’t many options to progress your career unless you were willing to travel and accountancy seemed like a very good career to take on the road with you.” From practice to industry Fitzsimons first moved to the Netherlands in 1990 for a six-month assignment with Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) and would go on to spend a decade in the country, moving out of audit practice in 1994 to join GE Plastics in Bergen op Zoom.  “My father had always said that, to be a really good accountant, I would need experience in industry. He encouraged me to make the move early in my career, so, when I came across a finance role with GE, I decided to take it,” he said. Then a $5 billion subsidiary of General Electric, the US-headquartered multinational, GE Plastics had opened a manufacturing plant in Bergen op Zoom in 1971. By 1994, the site had become a key part of GE’s global operations, serving customers internationally. “I started in general accounting, consolidation, things like that, and quickly realised that, to progress my career, I would need to relocate to GE headquarters in the US and gain experience in areas like FP&A and commercial finance,” Fitzsimons says. He made the move in 2000, spending a year at GE’s Fairfield headquarters in Connecticut before heading southwest to Ohio to take up the role of Group FP&A Leader for Aviation. “That was a huge step up for me in terms of role and responsibility. It was a very formative period in aviation. The industry was heavily impacted by 9/11 and I learned a lot working with leaders like Dave Calhoun (now CEO and President of Boeing),” says Fitzsimons. “I worked very closely with Dave and other great leaders for four years, learning from them, and I was then asked to return to GE’s Connecticut headquarters as FP&A leader for the company. I stayed there for seven years.” Having weathered the worst of the financial crisis helming GE’s FP&A function, Fitzsimons was ready for “something new.” Now aged 44, he had already forged a successful career spanning industry and practice in Europe and the US.  So, what next? “Asia,” says Fitzsimons. “It was missing on my resume.”  When an opportunity came up with GE in Hong Kong, he decided to take it and, in all, spent six years in Hong Kong, initially as GE’s Chief Financial Officer for Global Growth and Operations, followed by Senior Vice-President of Global Operations.  “Then I turned 50 and decided to do what I’d always advised people never to do. I took time off. I’d been working since I was 18. I kind of needed a break. It was the right choice for me,” he says. After his sabbatical, Fitzsimons was on the move again—this time to Mumbai on India’s west coast.  There, he took up the position of Chief Synergy Officer at Tata Sons, the private principal investment holding company for Tata Group, India’s diversified “coffee-to-cars” conglomerate with operations in more than 100 countries. “I’ve moved around a lot over the years and what I’ve found is that there are more similarities between businesses and people around the world than you might expect,” Fitzsimons says.  “Often, you’ll find that the overriding priority for most people is to create a better future for their kids. That’s a very unifying motivation. “Another unifier is that you will always find people in a new company or situation who are willing to help you. Sometimes these folks will be buried in the organisation. They are the people who really want to help the company succeed. They’re willing to accept you early on and help you find your way.” This experience has taught Fitzsimons the importance of getting to know people in any new organisation he joins “at all levels.” “I don’t just want to get to know my direct reports, I want to get to know the people who work for them. I want to get to know people working in other parts of the business. Demonstrating your interest, your curiosity, is really important – and really valuable. People notice it.” An early win An early win can also help to create the right impression in a new role. “It’s important to be able to make a visible difference at the outset,” Fitzsimons says.  “It doesn’t have to be a big win, but it matters that people see it. It lets them know that you have the right intentions; that you’re here to execute and make the company better.” Fitzsimons spent 18 months with Tata Group, leading efforts to create synergies across the group’s diverse set of businesses. “At that stage, it was time to go back to the States. My family wanted to be in the US. The opportunity to join AIG came up in July 2019 and I jumped at it,” he says. Fitzsimons’ first role with AIG was as Global Head of Shared Services, based in New York. At the time, AIG’s Global Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer of General Insurance was Peter Zaffino, who is now the company’s Chair and CEO. “The shared services role attracted me, but, more than that, I really wanted to work with Peter,” Fitzsimons says.  Global Head of Shared Services was a newly created role at AIG, established to act as a single point of accountability for all key operational and financial capabilities across the organisation. “My biggest motivator right the way through my career has been the opportunity to just dig in and solve complex operational problems as part of a team, and I knew this role would be very operational, which would allow me to get involved in a lot of different aspects of the business,” says Fitzsimons.  “I enjoy breaking problems down into little pieces, finding the right operating cadences and rhythms, and the pure satisfaction you get when you find a solution—especially when you’re working at a pace that’s not necessarily comfortable, but it works.” The value of joining AIG in the shared services role and working with Peter Zaffino as a leader became quickly apparent.  Within five months, Fitzsimons took on the additional role of Global Head of Financial Planning and Analysis and three months after that, he joined the highest ranks of AIG senior management when he became Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer in March 2021—and a member of the company’s 12-strong executive leadership team.  In October 2021, AIG announced that Fitzsimons would transition to the role of Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer by January 2022. In his new role as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, he leads hundreds of financial professionals across the globe who are supporting AIG’s priorities—from delivery on AIG’s financial performance objectives, to the separation of the Life and Retirement business from AIG, the execution of AIG’s budget and capital plans, and proactive engagement with investors and other stakeholders. Future plans & priorities “My biggest career goal now with AIG is to be the best CFO I can be; to cultivate and lead our diverse finance team in a way that allows each member to meet their own aspirations; and support the leaders who have placed their trust in me to be successful,” says Fitzsimons. A member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ireland since 1993 and a fellow since 2003, Fitzsimons’ career has taken him from Ireland to Europe, and on to the US and Asia. Despite his success in different industries, however, he didn’t have a “concrete” career plan starting out. “I always had ideas about the experiences I wanted to collect along the way, but I don’t think I ever had a set plan,” he says.  “My father had taught me the importance of gaining industry experience as an accountant, so you would have domain knowledge as a business advisor working in practice, but I found my niche in industry and that’s shaped my career. “Now, ultimately, my priority in my current role with AIG is to eventually leave the business better than I found it. It’s also very important for me personally to build a diverse and high-performing team within the finance function.  “My team is about 60 percent gender-diverse already, which is a high figure for leadership teams in financial services. The goal now is to build on all diversity within the finance team and right the way through the organisation.” Team dynamics For Fitzsimons, a healthy, diverse, and balanced team dynamic is essential to achieving successful outcomes – and there is no place for ‘hands-off’ leadership in this respect.  “Everything is about the team and how the team works together. I actually never use the word ‘manager’ in the sense that colleagues need to be constantly instructed,” he says. “Everyone needs to play an active role. Everybody’s got to have defined responsibilities. They must see themselves and their role as part of the team.” As Fitzsimons sees it, the ideal team should comprise a group of people with diverse experience and backgrounds. “They need to be able to communicate well with each other to be successful and ambitious,” he says.  “I always say that a perfect team has five people on it who think they can do my job and two who probably can. What’s important is the belief that they’re not working in silos and that they’re paying attention to the big picture. It’s a good dynamic.”

Pat O’Neill outlines his priorities for the year ahead, including the need to increase the supply of accounting talent nationwide and reach out to members globally post-pandemic.  As Pat O’Neill begins his term as President of Chartered Accountants Ireland, his driving focus will be on tackling the ongoing capacity constraints facing the profession. Speaking at his election by members at the Institute’s 134th AGM in Dublin recently, O’Neill pointed to the urgent need to address the ongoing shortage of critical accountancy skills in the Irish labour market. “Despite the recent and current challenges of the pandemic and the re-emergence of significant inflationary pressures, the economy continues to grow,” O’Neill told attendees at the AGM on Friday, 20 May.  “Our economic pillars of large-scale foreign direct investment and successful domestic business require appropriate levels of accounting talent, both within their organisations and also in the accounting profession upon which they rely for their transactional and regulatory compliance needs.”  Despite this fundamental need, however, the reliable supply of accounting talent continued to be disrupted by structural issues requiring urgent action, O’Neill said. “If we don’t work hard to tackle significant issues facing accounting supply in this country relating to education, qualifications and permits, this ongoing shortage could have a significant impact on businesses here, both indigenous and FDI, potentially harming the wider economy in the future.” Second-level syllabus One of the primary factors impeding the supply of accounting talent nationwide is the accounting syllabus at secondary level. “The syllabus was introduced over 25 years ago,” said O’Neill.  “Not only does this mean that our students are being taught material and concepts, which are now somewhat obsolete, but the syllabus also does little to introduce our young people to the breadth of what the modern accountant’s role actually is—and how they add value to businesses, the economy, and society as a whole.”   It is crucial that the syllabus be reviewed, refreshed, and made “truly fit for purpose” in the 21st century, O’Neill said.   “Without this, students will be deterred from pursuing further studies and a career in accounting due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what accountancy involves and the career opportunities and choices it provides,” he said.  “Another consequence is that we have an insufficient number of students emerging from second level through third level and into professional qualifications. Ultimately, this means Ireland won’t have enough ‘bench-strength’ to support Irish businesses—but, thankfully, it is within our power to create positive change now.”   Departmental submission The Institute, under the auspices of the Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies-Ireland, last year made a submission on this matter to the Department of Education, including the findings of its accounting syllabus review.   “The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment has published its Report on its Senior Cycle Review and, whilst we are heartened that reform of the senior cycle is now recognised as necessary, the pace of change is just too slow,” O’Neill said.   “It has taken four years to reach this stage and it will likely be 2027 by the time we see changes coming through in the first tranche of subjects, which are still to be determined.  “Unfortunately, during this time, the issues facing Irish businesses in terms of the lack of supply of accounting talent are only likely to worsen.”  As it stands, the accountancy profession is already included on the Government’s Critical Skills Occupations List.  Compiled by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the list catalogues professions required for the proper functioning of the economy, which are being impacted by a shortage of qualifications, experience or skills. The Northern Ireland Executive has also listed accountancy as an in-demand skill north of the border. Recognition of qualifications In addressing the capacity issue, O’Neill also referenced the need to ensure that the needs of business and the profession are met through the adequate recognition of qualifications. With more than 30 years’ experience as an audit partner with EY, he has significant involvement at board level with many plcs, providing insight and best practice guidance regarding boards’ risk and corporate governance agendas. “In the Republic, a substantial amount of the work required for the audit qualification must be statutory audit work,” O’Neill said. “This means that, despite students spending a significant amount of their training supporting US FDI businesses with their US reporting requirements—and with much of this controls work also used in the statutory audits of Irish subsidiaries—it will not count towards qualification. “The same goes for experience gained in auditing UK subsidiaries by students based in the Republic. The Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment and the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority (IAASA) must be involved in finding a solution to this situation.” Sourcing overseas talent O’Neill noted that, as a growing economy, if Ireland cannot source sufficient accounting capacity at home, we must ensure that we do all we can to attract candidates with the necessary skills from other countries. “It is my steadfast belief that people and businesses achieve great things when they come together and that diversity of background and thought is key to any profession,” he said. “I benefited from my own upbringing from an early age in Shannon, Co. Clare, which was at the time perhaps a uniquely multinational community in the regions. “Early in my career in audit, I moved from Dublin to the UAE where I spent some time working in Dubai in the early nineties. I was thrown in at the deep end and had the opportunity to work with some companies over there that followed US accounting rules.   “That experience turned out to be incredibly useful for me professionally for many reasons, not least because—when I returned to Dublin in 1995—Ireland’s tech boom had begun and indigenous companies like CBT, Smartforce, Iona, and Trintech, were listing on the Nasdaq.  “The experience I had gained working with those companies in Dubai following US accounting rules was suddenly invaluable, so I know first-hand just how important experience gained in other jurisdictions can be in our career.” Chartered Accountants Ireland has been working closely with the government in recent months to promote the need to reduce application processing times for Critical Skills Employment Permits granted to accountants from outside the European Economic Area who have been hired to work here.  “The improvement now coming through in the processing time for such permits as a result has seen wait times reduced to six to eight weeks from as high as four months,” said O’Neill.  “Now, however, we must retain—and even improve upon—these shorter processing times to attract the right talent.” Northern Ireland Protocol  O’Neill highlighted the need for certainty and stability in the wake of the most recent Assembly Elections amid ongoing disagreement on the Northern Ireland Protocol.  “The Protocol remains a subject of debate now more than ever, and there is no doubt that challenges exist, but predictability and certainty are key for business and the economy in Northern Ireland,” he said.  “The Institute was an early advocate for the unique benefits of the Protocol for businesses located in Northern Ireland.  “We have almost 5,000 members there, and it is incumbent upon us to convey the positive feedback the Institute has received regarding the unique market access they have into both Britain and the EU.” Power of connection Now that the worst of the COVID-19 restrictions are behind us, O’Neill stressed the need for greater connection and acknowledged the crucial role played by the Institute in supporting a global network and helping to forge valuable professional and personal connections among members the world over.  “The benefit of networking to our 30,000+ members, and the critical importance of the physical interaction of our students, cannot be understated,” he said.    “We will continue to work towards a return of our networking events to pre-pandemic levels to the extent we can over the coming year. We have been highly successful in our innovations in training, and ability to shift to examining our students remotely through the pandemic.   “Through the Institute’s Education Department, and in conjunction with our training firms, we will be looking at how to achieve a balanced blend of online and physical learning delivery in the future to facilitate this interaction.”  O’Neill is a longstanding member of the Institute who has served on the Council of Chartered Accountants Ireland since 2014. He is a former Chair of the Institute’s Audit, Risk and Finance Board, and a former Chair of its Leinster Society.   “The importance of the Institute and our District Societies both here, across the Island of Ireland, and abroad in connecting—and now reconnecting—our members is not lost on me,” said O’Neill.  “I have benefited enormously from my membership over the years, and during my Presidency, my hope is that I can give back to the Institute and to all of our members whose commitment is so highly valued.” Global membership Established in 1888, Chartered Accountants Ireland today represents more than 30,000 members in over 90 countries and has responsibility for educating 7,000 students.   The Institute’s objective is to create opportunities for members and students, and ethical, sustainable prosperity for society.   It is a founding member of Chartered Accountants Worldwide, the international network of over one million Chartered Accountants. It also plays key roles in the Global Accounting Alliance, Accountancy Europe, and the International Federation of Accountants.     “The Institute is here to serve our members and students and I feel privileged to be able to support this effort in my role as President,” said O’Neill.