USA and Switzerland sign agreement related to tax evasion

The US and Swiss governments have signed an agreement which will give the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) access to information that Swiss Bank UBS has on the names of 4,450 US citizens who have offshore accounts with the bank. The agreement can be found on the IRS website.

Interview with ICAS President in the Herald

On Saturday 15 August there was an interview in the Herald with current ICAS President Douglas Nisbet - "Let's stand up and be counted". The interview is also available as a podcast.

Research on decline of final salary pension schemes

Research by pension consultants Watson Wyatt has found that half the UK companies with defined benefit pension schemes expect to have closed them to all employees by 2012, according to an article in the FT on 18 August 2009.

FT op-ed on fair value accounting

On 18 August the Financial Times published an op-ed entitled "Disclose the fair values of complex securities" written by Robert Kaplan, Robert Merton and Scott Richard on fair-value accounting for asset holdings for banks and other financial institutions.