In August 2002, Sir David Tweedie delivered an oft-quoted speech in Australia: he told the attending luminaries that they had never flown on an aircraft that was on the airline’s balance sheet. It is somewhat serendipitous that on the eighth anniversary of that speech (give or take a couple of days for poetic licence) the International Accounting Standards Board and the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (together, ‘the boards’) issued an exposure draft of proposals that might put those aircraft on two balance sheets instead.

Lea