Professor Tweedie loves a good fight. He relishes the chance to take a big stick to finance directors trying to pull the wool over shareholders' eyes. With the current share option accounting proposals (Share-Based Payment: Accounting Standards Board) he has even found a populist issue. All those massive executive share options that are hidden away from the profit and loss accounts must be brought to account. Who could object to that?

I recommend reading the 96 pages that the ASB takes to justify this proposal, because there is more to this than meets the eye. Even the profit and loss account is replaced by an income statement. The old idea that the P&L represented long-term smoothed cashflow is too simplistic for today's regulators.