The IASB and the Failure of Corporate Governance

Abstract

Business corporations tend to get a bad press as bully-boys of the economic world. They are favourite targets of anti-capitalist protest. One outcome of the recent turmoil in the banking sector is increasing popular concern over the issue of corporate governance in general and “conflict of interest” in particular. A major part of the problem is that financial theory has become so toxic that the degree of public accountability necessary to bring corporate bodies within the control of market forces does not exist.