AGM April Board Meeting

The 2021 Board meeting was held on 14 April in Sydney.  The Board heard that despite the pandemic, the organisation’s pivot to online meetings and events had been very successful.  Membership had largely held during the pandemic and finances remained healthy.

Retiring Board Members, Colin Pavlovich (Navitas), Vanessa Hudson (Qantas), and Julie Cleary (KPMG) were thanked for their contributions to the Board over the last twelve months.  Chair, Janelle Hopkins, confirmed that Inder Singh (QBE), Alex Willcocks (Wesfarmers) and Daniel Camilleri (KPMG) had been elected to the Board.

Following the AGM, the Board moved to the April Board Meeting.  Members were updated on the preparations for the Political Engagement Day in Canberra on 23 June, as well as the ongoing work being done on the Payment Times Reporting Framework, class actions, proxy holders and online meetings as well as events that were being planned.

The Board received papers from several G100 working groups and discussed issues arising from the Taxation Reform working group, again focussing on the importance of tax expertise for companies as well as work being done with the CTA.

The Future of the Profession working group outlined their approach to bring members up to speed on technological and other developments impacting the finance function.  The working group has begun its next series of online webinars discussing and debating options for the future.

The Sustainability working group has also begun their webinar series, more will be announced shortly dealing with non-financial reporting including reporting on social performance.  It was pleasing that the recent webinar, ‘Rise of Social Responsibility, Performance and Disclosure’ attracted 120 people.

The Diversity & Inclusion working group is now up and running and has two events in planning, these will be announced shortly.

The Board noted that Simon Cammell would be stepping down as the Head of the External Reporting working group, to be replaced by Adam Sofoulis of Wesfarmers.  The Chair thanked Simon for his contribution to the working group over a number of years.

If you have senior staff interested in any of our working groups, please contact the Secretariat on [email protected].  As I have said, these are designed to enable CFOs’ senior managers to examine industry-wide issues of importance and widen their peer networks.