Sir David Tweedie, chairman of the Accounting Standards Board (ASB), is standing firm against claims that Fred20, the new accounting standard for retirement benefits, will wreak havoc in the accounts of companies unready for its introduction.

He rejected suggestions by consultants Bacon & Woodrow that the standard's implementation would cause an unworkable volatility in company accounts. 'All we want to do is to show what's happening in the accounts, not to ignore the present by smoothing it away into the future (as happens under SSAP24, the current standard),' Tweedie says.