Memo to anyone thinking of a career in financial reporting: try to avoid having to do it in the midst of unprecedented economic turmoil. What happens is that you find yourself in the middle and being blamed for everyone else’s poor behaviour. The phrase ‘shoot the messenger’ doesn’t start to cover it. But for Sir David Tweedie, the chairman at the helm of the International Accounting Standards Board, this sort of thing doesn’t seem to create the pressures you might imagine. He shrugs his shoulders and smiles. ‘You don’t expect a round of applause in this job,’ he says.

And that has