Accountants are easy prey, but it is not often they mock their own kind. However, Sir David Tweedie, head of the International Accounting Standards Board, was in full swing at the gala dinner of the Federation of European Securities Exchanges annual bash in Brussels. Anyone, he joked, with half a mind to join the industry was probably over-qualified. He said there are only two things wrong with UK accounting:

'The profit and loss account and the balance sheet.'