Why Being A Worldwide Accountant Can Be So Exciting E-Book

David Murrell FCA

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 170

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Thinking of a career in accounting? Worried you'll nod off every day at the office? Love numbers but want to find a way to be an accountant who does interesting work inside AND outside the office? Well, you can be that kind of an accountant. Look at the accountant in this book. This Chartered Accountant does not do what you would usually think an accountant does. This man absolutely loves what he does, particularly specialising in the worldwide media and entertainment industry. He makes sure he uses his skills and multiple contacts, including royalty, anywhere he can, within legal limits, of course. Not only is this accountant good at what he does, but he's also very ambitious, confident and keeps working so it goes smoothly. He certainly shows why being an accountant can be so exciting!

Leseprobe

Imprint

All rights of distribution, also through movies, radio and television, photomechanical reproduction, sound carrier, electronic medium and reprinting in excerpts are reserved.

© 2025 novum publishing gmbh

Rathausgasse 73, A-7311 Neckenmarkt

[email protected]

ISBN print edition: 978-3-7116-0471-2

ISBN e-book: 978-3-7116-0472-9

Editor: Samantha Acker

Cover photos: David Murrell FCA; Viktoria Protsak | Dreamstime.com

Cover design, layout & typesetting: novum publishing

www.novum-publishing.co.uk

Introduction

At various functions, people often inquire about an individual’s occupation, background and achievements. When the answer is ‘a chartered accountant’, there often follows something approaching a yawn and a natural assumption by the inquirer that the person might be quite good at adding numbers.

They imagine that, he or she, as it is with business bookkeepers, would sit at the same desk in his or her permanent office for five days between 9 am and 5.30 pm every Monday through Friday, except for their annual holiday. This would involve adding numbers whilst preparing accounts and tax computations for small businesses. He or she may need to do some overtime and is normally allowed a normal number of weeks for holiday each year.

The above is often the case for bookkeepers in small firms of chartered accountants and business advisors, just as it was for David, who, at fifteen years of age, started a five-year training contract with a firm in Minehead in Somerset in the South West of England. He had obtained the sufficient O’level passing grades so he was allowed to work there.

This office dealt solely with a variety of local businesses for tax-payable calculation purposes and preparing accounts for lodgement at Companies House, if the business was a limited company. After the mandatory training of five years (now less than that) dealing with numerous different types of local businesses, he passed all the several examinations to become a Chartered Accountant at 21 years of age.

Very soon after, he successfully applied to and joined the London office of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. (now KPMG), one of the then-Big-Eight firms in London. This was with the intention to gain experience in numerous financial services dealing with much larger businesses. This would involve dealing with audits, tax compliance and advice, investigations and insolvencies and acquisitions often on a multinational scale.

The intention was that he would then return to take up a promised partnership in Minehead. However, David earned several promotions in a very short time in London and subsequently achieved two very senior different positions at the same time on the UK, European and Worldwide Boards of what became KPMG, one of the Big Four (formerly Big Eight before mergers) worldwide accounting and consulting firms.

At KPMG, there was only ever office space and desks for less than a quarter of their personnel as the work was usually carried out mainly at clients’ premises where the management and the financial records were located. Sometimes, they were outside the accountant’s home locality and sometimes outside the United Kingdom.

When it is mentioned that you have worked on a multitude of one-offs or more assignments of audits, financial advisory, tax and insolvencies and some financial assignments in nearly thirty countries in the world, including for some months each in some unusual countries, like Japan, Dubai, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Hong Kong and the United States, as well as many countries in Europe, there is often an increasingly look of incredibility. This gets worse when you state that you have enjoyed holidays in another twenty countries, including Antarctica and the Arctic.

It also raises eyebrows when, in response to the question of, ‘Have you ever worked with anybody famous?’ you mention, amongst many others, you have entertained H.M. The King, the late H.M. The Queen, the late Duke of Edinburgh, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Princess Royal and Prince Edward and sat next to several of them at charitable and business events, this seems to border on further incredulity. This gets even more remarkable when you have assisted a senior Government minister on a project to enhance funding for the UK’s film industry.

David has enjoyed working personally with numerous media and entertainment business icons, like Sir Richard Branson, Chris Wright CBE, Sir George Martin and Sir Christopher Bland; this garners further astonishment and questions, like, ‘What are they like to deal with?’ He has also worked free of charge for several well-known charities, like being the receipts collector for Comic Relief, president and a committee member of the Film and Television Charity (formerly the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund) and a member of the Variety Golf charity and others.

When it comes to sport, further amazement follows when it gets mentioned that you played golf in the Pro-Am Tournaments in Continental Europe on the European Golf Tour three times in the 1990s, and, later, as the worldwide head of marketing at KPMG, personally organised the corporate sponsorship for KPMG of well-known professional golfers on the European Tour and the European Seniors Tour. This led to the signing of KPMG’s sponsorship of some of the most popular professional golfers in the world, including Phil Mickelson, which still existed until very recently.

David was at Wembley in 1966 on the day that England won the football World Cup for the first and only time, and this also sparks incredulity again as with being an expert witness in a media court case. The same reaction occurs when it is mentioned you worked on the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd tours and that you owned racehorses.

This is the true story of a UK Country Boy accountant, who was, for more than three decades, one of the best known financial professionals operating in the United Kingdom, European and worldwide film, television, radio and other media and entertainment industries, featuring royalty, famous businesses and businesspeople, charities and sportsmen. Simultaneously, for a while, he was KPMG’s head of the UK, European and worldwide information, communications, media and entertainment practices, and head of KPMG’s UK, European and worldwide marketing.

It just shows Why Being A Worldwide Accountant Can Be So Exciting.

Schooling and Early Working Years in Somerset

For five years, starting from age five, I attended the local school in Minehead, Somerset, and somehow or other, five years later managed to pass the entrance examination to Taunton (Public) School in Somerset. This was 25 miles away at one of the three private schools in that town. Every school day, this necessitated a 25-mile, each way, steam-train journey between Minehead and Taunton, leaving home at 7 am and returning in the late afternoon.

With the loss of my father’s father very early on in his life leading to his mother and family being impoverished, my father managed to secure a scholarship to Taunton School, one of the three public schools in that town. My two brothers were seven and nine years older than me, with the gap being attributable to my father being posted to West Africa during the Second World War. Both of my brothers had attempted unsuccessfully to obtain the very small number of available scholarships, which would have provided them with free schooling at Taunton School starting from age 11, so my father had to pay the full fees for them to attend there until they were 16 years old. My father thought it unlikely I would achieve any better success so he thought it a waste of time for me to bother seeking a scholarship, so I never took the scholarship exam.

I did, however, manage to pass the entrance examination to attend Taunton School, and, subsequently at 15 years, 11 months old, I had sufficient O’level passes to train for a minimum period of five years working as an articled clerk in a Chartered Accountants practice in Minehead. In the practice, there were three partners who oversaw the work produced by about thirty people in a general practice department. This was headed up by a senior manager and deputy manager, as well as employed qualified accountants and articled clerks who were training to be Chartered Accountants, supported by some secretaries. To become a fully qualified Chartered Accountant, it was necessary to pass three national examinations over five years. Sadly, many of my work colleagues did not make this, but I managed to scrape through. Virtually all the work for clients was spent in the chartered accountancy firm’s office.

The work generally involved preparing accounts from the business income and expenditure recorded in cash books and supporting documentation supplied by each local client. These annual accounts would be submitted to the local H.M. Inspector of Taxes together with calculations of the taxes payable on the profits seeking Inland Revenue approval. If it was a limited company, the accounts would also need to be lodged at the UK’s Companies House and also with the client’s bank if they had bank loans or overdrafts to ensure there was sufficient cover to repay them in due course.

There was a wide difference between the separate types of businesses, virtually all of which were within a 20-mile radius, as the banks and nationally known high street businesses invariably employed national accountants and auditors rather than local ones. The clients dealt with locally included shopkeepers, farmers, tradesmen, garages, hotels and restaurants.

To my amazement, at 21 years of age, I was in line for a partnership in the local accountancy firm in Minehead. However, it was decided that, to obtain wider experience before returning later with the possibility of taking up the offer of partnership, I would first seek to join one of the then-Big-Eight-largest UK accountancy firms in London for three years. I then sought and was invited to interviews in London with two of the eight-largest accountancy firms in the UK and the World of Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. (“Peat Marwick” is now KPMG) and Price Waterhouse, now “PWC” (which stands for PricewaterhouseCoopers).

To my further amazement, particularly as I had chosen to not go to university when I left school, I was offered employment as a newly qualified chartered accountant by both firms. I was very impressed with both firms but, as a country boy from Somerset, I was more attracted to Peat Marwick. This was because Price Waterhouse, like several other large accountancy firms, had numerous specialised departments for dealing with company audits OR company taxation OR specialist assignments, like investigations for acquisitions OR dealing with insolvencies. The setup at Peat Marwick was very different with a mainly general practice, with departments acting like small firms, which dealt with all of the above, but with relatively small, specialist backup teams.

At the accountants’ office in Somerset, there was a group of us who played in the local leagues of nine-pin-skittle bowling in special areas on the side of or above several pubs and clubs, each year. Our team name was called the Bowlers, and, at the start of the game, and, often longer, we would wear bowler hats.

This was very much a local activity played once a week for many weeks in the year, and I believe it is not usually played much outside West Somerset. The differences with the more-recently established ten-pin bowling are:

More space between the skittles so it was often possible for the ball to go straight through the middle without knocking over any other skittle.Differing lengths between the bowling area and the skittles, depending on the space available.Different types of ball with some being hard rubber and some wooden. No finger holes in the balls. Nine pins, rather than ten, are set up in a diamond shape at the end of the lane.Each team’s six players would throw his three balls twelve times in each game, and the cumulative scores were noted in chalk on a scoreboard. If the player knocked them all over in two balls, his score counted as nine plus the number he scored for his third ball. If he did it in one ball, for what was called a “flopper”, he had two more scoring balls. Theoretically, he could score twenty-seven knocking over all nine pins three balls in a row, but that was extremely rare. After each turn of three balls, the skittles would be manually reset by two individuals at the side of the pins who would stand them up again for the next player. Every skittle room and alley was different in design in each pub.

After a couple of years, unbelievably, our youngish team won the second division, and, on promotion, amazingly, we won the first division two years later. This was much to the chagrin of the other local teams, many of whom viewed us as upstarts. Soon after, I left to work in London. Sadly, the team folded a few years later.

Early Years, Living in London

Having qualified as a chartered accountant in Somerset at 21 years of age, I was advised that it would be a good idea to spend three years in London gaining much wider experience. This would be useful before returning to Minehead to take up a partnership offered in the local accountancy firm.

Not surprisingly, life was very different in London in 1968. Knowing virtually nobody in London, I found cheap accommodation in a guest house in Highbury Grove, close to the Arsenal football ground. On many weekdays, I commuted daily by underground train from Highbury Grove tube station to Bank station and then walked to Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co’s (now KPMG’s) Ironmonger Lane office, just off Cheapside. However, for more than eighty per cent of the time, I went straight to the client’s offices elsewhere to carry out audits, taxation and financial advisory work. The number of chairs in KPMG’s office only accounted for less than a fifth of the total members of the department, as the remainder of the staff were meant to be working temporarily at client’s offices where their books and records were kept.

On alternate weekends, I drove back and forth between London and Somerset to see my then-girlfriend, and, on the Saturday evening of the alternate weekend, I visited my cousin and her husband in Cheam in Surrey for a meal.

I knew very few people in London so I wanted to visit as many as possible of Football League team’s home grounds in or near the city. I have many happy, lasting memories of many matches, save for the frightening experience of witnessing Millwall supporters throwing stones and other missiles at the visiting team’s coach as they were leaving the ground after their match. Many windows were shattered but amazingly no significant injuries were reported.

Obviously, I saw as many of my favourite team Newcastle’s matches with mixed success, but since my short time of residing in Highbury, I have also been keen on Arsenal. This was a novelty for me in London as I was used to having Football League teams being 40 miles away in Exeter and also two teams 60 miles away in Bristol, and it was too far to travel to their home matches.

On Wednesday evenings, in the Arsenal Tavern in Highbury Grove, there was often a talent night with a live band with the possibility of winning £1 on a clapometer basis. I sometimes participated with some saying I sang well but others told the truth!

Whilst I did sing to great applause the Tom Jones hit ‘Green Grass of Home’, my favourites were Jim Reeves’ songs:

‘I Love You Because’‘Welcome to My World’‘Adios Amigo’‘Am I Losing You’‘He’ll Have to Go’

I was a little tearful the other day when Jim died and will always be grateful to him for earning me £2 singing his songs. It brought back many happy memories of a bygone era.

Of other songs, the easiest one to sing was ‘Ob la Di, Ob la Da’ originating with the Drifters but copied later by the Beatles. The secret is to choose a song to sing that is similar to the ones above, which do not have many highs and lows and hoping many in the audience will join in singing, particularly choruses, and this can cause much merriment. Amazingly, I did win a pound or two, but my thoughts of turning professional caused much disbelief amongst many others!

The highlight was being asked to appear as a guest singer at the Hammersmith Palais for a one-off guest performance on a Friday night in front of hundreds of partygoers. I greatly enjoyed the experience, particularly as it went down well with the big audience, and the backing group were great! Obviously, one chose fast moving songs for the audience to dance to, particularly those with the big choruses as the backing group would wade in to inflate the volume. The slower songs came towards the end of the performance when smooch time was more popular. Many advisors advised me to stick to my day job, although I have never been booed off cruise liners’ talent competitions. Some say the audiences were too polite!

One advantage I gained is never being too frightened of speaking publicly (often live) with a microphone on several live radio and television appearances, commenting on the topic of critical matters in the media and entertainment world and their possible and/or likely outcomes, which I specialised in, and is covered in further chapters.

Early Years, Working for KPMG in London

Upon arriving in London from Somerset to work as a newly qualified chartered accountant at Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. (now KPMG), I was allocated to one of the several general practice departments of about thirty to forty people. This had a senior manager, a deputy manager, some assistant managers and supervising seniors, some more junior qualified chartered accountants and articled clerks, mainly training straight after attending universities, and secretarial staff. The departments were named after each senior manager.

In many respects, unlike other accountancy firms, each of the numerous departments operated more like a small accountancy firm within itself, even though all of them were an individual part of a firm many times larger, overseen by the partners upstairs. The staff’s work was mainly performed at clients’ premises, and the departmental office area was quite small, so it was a big problem at certain periods, like holiday times, when clients did not choose to entertain their auditors or advisors. The general practice departments had access to the relatively few other specialist departments dealing with complicated tax and liquidations when required.

Eventually, I was promoted to a supervising senior accountant in 1971, heading up assignment teams of qualified accountants and articled clerks, and, in 1973, I became the deputy manager of a department involved in numerous client assignments, including National Westminster Bank. Four years later in 1977, I became the senior manager responsible for a whole department of thirty-five people named after me. Clients, amongst many others, included London Weekend Television (later merging into ITV) and the Rank Organisation, a very large media and entertainment group. In 1981, I was invited to join the KPMG London partnership for the next nineteen years, a very distant dream of a country boy who did not go to university.

Some of the numerous assignments, up until I voluntarily left KPMG in 2000, are contained in several other chapters of this book. Many were outside London, in South East England, the United Kingdom and Europe. The highlight in London was being appointed to the UK, European and worldwide boards of KPMG, which employed over a million people, and, for a period, simultaneously as head of KPMG’s Worldwide Marketing with huge multimillion-dollar and -pound budgets to spend on items over and above individual countries and continents. It was fun producing worldwide brochures on services provided.

Simultaneously, I was head of KPMG’s Worldwide Information, Communications, Media and Entertainment practice employing many thousands of professional accountants and consultants dealing with those industries with substantial UK, European and worldwide budgets. Not surprisingly, the worldwide travel was huge and very time-consuming. However, most of it was fun and interesting, working with and meeting many talented men and women worldwide.

Working for Banks

National Westminster Bank