The term ‘creative accounting’ always carries the pejorative implication that accepted accounting rules are being manipulated to make trading results over a defined period appear to be better (never worse) than warranted by facts.

Perennial rule tightening is like painting the Forth Bridge – the job is never done. Standards, the building blocks of true and fair reporting, remain susceptible to ‘creativity’ – a term that, in any other field of human activity, would be counted as virtue rather than vice.

Will