In 1986, I was selected to represent the country as a paper-writer at the XIII World Congress of Accountants to be held in Tokyo in 1987. The World Congress of Accountants is held every 4 years and is organised by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC)
My co-paper writer was Warren Allen, a partner of Ernst & Whinney (now EY) from New Zealand. The challenge of putting together the paper was enormous. In 1986 there was no e-mail, only telexes and faxes. International calls were expensive. How were we going to design the theme of the paper together and who was going to write what?
In July 1986, we decided to meet in Singapore. I found him to be an extremely amiable individual and capable professional. We agreed that we should do something out-of-the-box. We created a case study around an imaginary company called Asia Pacific Travels with a cast of global characters. The CEO’s name was Chuck Lombardo, an American, the CFO was Ram Prasad (the namesake of the famous Bengali who wrote devotional songs and whose day job was, ironically, that of an accountant!), the head of operations Tim Lee was a Kiwi and the head of the computer department was Tom Suzuki, a Japanese. We brain-stormed the storyline and wrote down in long-hand. Then we had them typed and printed. I still preserve some of the manuscripts in an old, crumbling file. By the time we finished our Singapore meeting, we were confident that we could pull off the project.
When I went back to Calcutta I discovered that the global leadership team of Price Waterhouse(PW) had become aware that I had been selected to present a paper at the World Congress of Accountants. 1987 was going to be a critical year for PW in relation to IFAC. The baton of the global President of IFAC was scheduled to pass on from Robert May (US) of Arthur Andersen, our arch rival, to PW’s Richard Wilkes (UK). Richard Wilkes had been sent out the alerts to the global team.
Our global leadership team was both excited and concerned. Excited because I would be able to showcase the best of PW’s cutting edge technologies. Concerned, because in those days India was a backwater of information technology and I was an unproven young Indian partner. Dick Fitzgerald of Price Waterhouse World Firm (PWWF) wrote a long letter to PW India’s senior partner Kamesh Bhargava. In conclusion he said, “It would also be desirable to have Roopen spend some time with us in London (at World Firm expense) to see what is available here that he could use to minimize his own efforts.”
Since I was just married, PWWF was gracious enough to invite my wife as well to London. A serviced apartment for us at Chelsea in London was rented. I was provided an assistant and a ‘mentor’. Because of the time zone differences between the UK and New Zealand, I used to write my part of the paper and fax it to Warren in Wellington before I went home. Warren did the same and we had long telephone calls at unearthly hours as I could make calls only from the office. After 3 weeks, we pretty much had the working draft ready. To create the presentation slides (no Power Point then) and package the case study for final printing, we decided to meet once again in Singapore in November 1986. Warren and I had become good friends by then.
The meeting in Singapore was productive. We despatched the final paper to Robert Sempier, the Executive Director of IFAC in New York before we boarded our respective flights. On my return to Calcutta I received a copy of a signed note circulated by Richard Wilkes to the global leadership of PW. The note said: “I have just returned from a meeting of the World Congress Committee in Tokyo. I thought you would be interested to know the response to date for attending Roopen Roy’s lecture on the auditing of Microcomputer Systems. The pre-registration forms received up to August 25 for this session show a total of 575 people have opted for this. Of these 139 for the English version and 413 for the Japanese version. The balance is largely German. This is certainly going to be one of the most popular optional sessions with nearly 25% of the applicants opting for it.”
Warren and I agreed to meet in Tokyo a couple days before the actual presentation. The Japanese were meticulous about choreography and time keeping. We discovered that on final count, over a thousand participants had signed up for our session. We were, therefore, requested to present the paper three times-one to an exclusively Japanese audience. We had to pace ourselves to finish exactly on time. Warren and I practised like relay race runners with cues to each other. Our presentation was to be translated simultaneously in several languages so we were taught to speak, in what the Japanese call, global English: slowly, clearly and without idioms. The event went off rather well. It was time for us to part ending a long collaboration spanning a little over a year.
On his return, Warren wrote to me on 8th December 1987: “To be able to participate in such a stimulating event such as the World Congress and indeed to be involved in jointly presenting a technical paper with another professional from another country was a once in a life-time opportunity.” I waited till 22nd December and replied to him enclosing a copy of The Chartered Accountant journal from India. It had published our paper in full with photographs of Warren and myself. I also enclosed a flattering letter dated November 13th, 1987 from Dr Kamal Gupta the Technical Director of the Indian Institute which read as follows: “This I believe would convince the general readership that our Institute was ably represented at the World Congress (also that we have chartered accountants who are extremely competent and handsome at the same time).”
Warren and I went on our respective journeys. I transferred to management consulting and bid good-bye to computer auditing. Warren rapidly progressed in his profession as a public accountant. He was elected to the office of the President of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants. In a crowning glory of his career, he was elected in 2012 as the President of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) which is the highest peak for a public accountant. I congratulated him. We have kept in touch over e-mail but we have never met after 1987. This year I intend to change that by visiting him in Wellington.