Jan du Plessis, the former chairman of BT Group and a host of other FTSE-100 companies, is a leading candidate to chair Britain’s audit watchdog as it prepares for a radical shift in its oversight of corporate Britain.
Sky News has learnt that Mr du Plessis, who stepped down as BT’s chairman this week after four years at the helm, is on a shortlist of contenders to become chairman of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC).
City sources said that the search for a new chair, which is being overseen by officials at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), had narrowed in recent weeks, with an appointment expected to be made early in 2022.
Mr du Plessis is understood to be viewed in Whitehall as having excellent credentials for the FRC post, having chaired SABMiller, the brewing giant, British American Tobacco and Rio Tinto, the miner, as well as BT.
He has also served on FTSE-100 boards at Lloyds Banking Group and Marks & Spencer.
Whoever lands the role is highly likely to be the FRC’s final chairman, before it is abolished and replaced by a statutory regulator called the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA).
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, has spoken about audit reform being a priority for the government, although it emerged several weeks ago that a wider corporate governance overhaul that would make company directors more accountable for financial statements was likely to be scaled back.
Government sources say their objective is to legislate and have ARGA operational by about the spring of 2023 – a timetable that would need to be adhered to if BEIS is to attract a chairman of Mr du Plessis’s standing.
As the body responsible for overseeing corporate governance standards in the boardrooms of Britain’s biggest companies, the FRC has been left embarrassed by its…
Source : skynews
