New word
How about this bit of jargon?
Leadagement
"The basic principles of MANAGEMENT and those of LEADERSHIP practices are easily reducible to CONCEPTS that can become synthesised in the wholistic system of LEADAGEMENT, which hopefully indue course give us LEADAGERS: the dynamic Leader-Managers or Manager-Leaders of tomorrow," says BISIKAY director of the Global LEADAGEMENT Institute in London. (The capitals are all his, not mine)
I got that from the Times Online Snakes and Ladders Blog.
Didn't we used to call it leadership? Well, language does develop and although I am dead set against AmerEnglish, new words like this can have a place in the modern world.
Duncan Williamson
Corporate Governance
According to today's Financial Times
Britain's largest listed companies have sharply reduced the number of senior managers on their boards in the past five years, with non executive directors now outnumbering executive directors in the FTSE 100 by more than two to one.
Figures compiled by Cranfield management school show the number of executive directors of the 100 largest listed companies has fallen 27% since the Higgs report called for a better balance between executives and non executives.
Whilst this is right in line with UK corporate governance thinking and practice for the last ten years or so, people are asking whether such a trend is a good thing. Why is that? Well, with just two executive directors, the danger is that the real power within a company rests with those two. Who are those two executive directors likely to be? The Chairman and CEO (the old MD) and the Finance Director.
Moreover, if there are just two executives on the Board that might, I say might, strengthen the argument that, therefore, the roles of Chairman and CEO should be combined ... which is against the rules of UK corporate governance. Bit of a circular argument there if it's true.
Duncan Williamson
Tax change proposals
I think things are getting rather scary over at the treasury.
The non dom tax kerfuffle we saw over the summer had the Treasury deciding that non doms should be brought under the tax net.
They've taken it a step further: read what I have just read in today's Financial Times
"Business travellers making as few as four overnight visits to Britain a month could find themselves tax-resident under proposals from the UK government, experts warned on Monday.
"The UK's residency test, which can make someone resident after spending as little as 90 days in Britain, will be one of the strictest in the world after planned changes, the Chartered Institute of Taxation warned. The new regime, which will include dates of arrival and departure as days in the UK, is introduced in April."
That day of arrival and departure test is a key one because it means that if I arrived from abroad at one minute to midnight on the first day of my visit to the UK, then whatever I earned during the WHOLE of that day would be subject to tax if I were to fall under the UK Treasury's tax spell. Think that's ridiculous? Be warned, these people at HMRC are nothing if not literal. If they can prove that you arrived at 1 minute to midnight, they WILL charge you for the full day! The same when you leave at, say, 1 minute fter midnight!
I think the implications of this matter really are serious now as there does seem to be a movement to get people on the margins of our tax system into it. As someone who has been a tax exile, I know how dangerous these implications are: there are people who do make such short visits and they really will be horrified at how all encompassing the new UK rules will be. I once spent just three days in the UK in one tax year as part of my tax planning: that was part of a balanced multi year management of my tax circumstances.
Who are the people who are going to fall foul of this new rule? Well, people like me but the FT says:
"The Treasury is attempting to change rules that allow people to work in Britain while living in tax havens such as Monaco, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. It expects about 17,000 non residents to be brought into the British tax net, raising an extra £125m ($252m, €175m) over the next three years."
I wonder how many other more ordinary people are going to be affected by this? I for one would have been horrified if I had been dragged back into the tax system when I was woring abroad continuously for ten years.
Duncan Williamson
