The search for unity in the French accountancy profession, 1969–1996

Abstract

The French accountancy profession is represented by two principal professional organisations, one comprising experts-comptables, or chartered accountants, and the other commissaires aux comptes, or auditors. Following the organisation of the audit profession in 1969, attempts have been made to form a single accountancy profession. The paper analyses the unsuccessful attempts to achieve unification from the 1970s to the 1990s. It is shown that the motivation for unification mutated over the focal period. Changing organisational elites played significant roles in furthering and hindering attempts at merger. The intervention of the state was a source of confusion and added complexity to professional discourses. The existence of unions (syndicats) and associations within the professional organisations is revealed as a peculiar and significant feature of professional configurations in France. The increasing presence of large international firms in France also impacted on the debate. Despite increased cooperation between the two professional groups, unification was not achieved. Divergent visions of the professional model, personal differences between organisational actors and the fragmentation of interests within the two professions ensured the preservation of organisational separatism.

Keywords:

• accountancy profession
• France
• unification
• expert-comptable
• audit

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Ordre's presidents who agreed to be interviewed and particularly to Paul Garcin and Léo Jégard who kindly opened their private archives. Thanks are due for helpful suggestions from those attending a presentation of this paper at the JHCM conference in Paris 2010, especially Béatrice Touchelay. We are also very grateful to the two referees and to Stephen Walker for constructive comments.

Notes

IFEC membership was voluntary. There is no official link between the IFEC and the Ordre. The fact that ‘expert-comptable’ features in the name IFEC indicates that it has more chartered accountants than members of the Ordre. The objective of the IFEC is to bring together the chartered accountants belonging to both professional organizations.

For an analysis of the impact of the international firms on the French accounting profession, see Ramirez (2003).

Plaquette du 6ème congrès national sur les nouvelles dimensions de la profession comptable des 6, 7 et 8 Juillet 1972.

Jean Sigaut was the editor in chief of Noir sur Bleu, the ‘journal of information and action by the union to promote independent accounting professions’. He began a fight with the ‘foreign firms’ and with his supporters also launched an audio magazine Franc-Parler, with a strong focus on the defence of small firms and the individualistic values of French-style professionalism.

The Ordre did not produce auditing standards and working methods; this was not its responsibility. It worked on accountancy, tax and legal working methods and standards.

Edouard Salustro, at the personal request of Jacques Dumont, represented the accounting profession on the subject of the valuation of nationalised companies.

In 1983, the CPP was referred to in certain documents as the commission paritaire permanente, and the CPRI as the commission paritaire des relations internationales (involving a technical panel of 15 firms systematically consulted in turn on the various plans).

Commission paritaire de l'examen national d'activité.

Decree no. 81–536 of 12 May 1981 relating to a chartered accountancy diploma; Decree no. 81–537, 12 May 1981 and Order of 11 August 1981 relating to the diploma for higher education in accountancy.

In 1982, Jacques Delors had already commissioned Christian Aubin to undertake a survey of accounting professions and their concerns about their future: ‘professionals who are doing well, professionals in danger’, ‘confined’ and ‘divided’: the Ordre and the Compagnie although similar in every way (their work, their technique, their ethics, their members) live in haughty co-existence which ‘does not help to give a clear image of accountancy or a good image of accountants’ (‘Les comptables mettent la gomme’, Le Nouvel Economiste, no. 324, 15 Février 1982, 56–61). To borrow the words of Mr Huet himself, the Aubin report provided a ‘salutary shock’ with its uncompromising criticism.

Page 6 of a memo dated 22 June 1983 on current firms (not institutions) mentions ‘rigid organisations’ and suggests that they should be made more flexible ‘to the obvious benefit of a few groups at the forefront of the profession, which could become ‘drivers’ for the whole profession’, involving creation of larger professional units made possible by adaptation of the laws, and institutional incentives from the public authorities. The aim was to encourage creation and operation of auditing companies with a view to creating a network of professionals ‘to collect data, share experiences and develop doctrine, enabling the partners to offer their major clients a method, a memory, references, and progressively a network of correspondents comparable to that offered by the large foreign firms’: chartered accountants, advisors, lawyers, etc.

The report supplied detailed information on the electoral college, attributions of the national and regional councils, which would also be open to other professionals such as salaried chartered accountants, agricultural auditors and tax and legal advisors not opting to qualify as lawyers and who could be included in the register of chartered accountants and auditors, or alternatively listed in a specific register kept by the institute itself, in the same way as salaried accountants. The institute would have the complex task of taking diversification of activities into consideration, as well as all the specificities and special interests of members, to make a merger possible and avoid the creation of any autonomous group or ad hoc society, especially for the large audit firms.

It was even suggested that the personnel and offices used for this committee should be shared in the form of a non-profit association or joint venture set up for the purpose. An equivalent system would also be set up in the regions. The idea of a federation had in fact already been included in the 1981 agreement.

Maison de la Comptabilité.

The association française pour le développement de l'audit (AFDA), whose articles of association were signed on 15 July 1982, was created as the result of a study carried out by the High Council on the situation of auditing in France, with a view to establishing a permanent entity able to bring together all professionals working in auditing, under the control of the Council, which agreed to head the AFDA supervision committee by 15 votes for and 7 abstentions at the 216th ordinary meeting of 5, 6 and 7 July 1982. Edouard Salustro, the kingpin, ‘denies wanting to turn this into an instrument of warfare against the Anglo-Saxon firms’ (Le Nouvel Economiste, no. 324, 15 Février 1982). But the way the large firms took over most of the audits of CAC40 index companies helped to kill off the AFDA (Ramirez 2003, 77).

Groupe d'Etude et de Propositions pour la Réglementation de l'Activité Comptable. This group consisted of 15 members, including F. Fournet, the previous president (1990–1992), J.P. Audy and R. Ricol. Ten meetings were held from March to July 1992.

Named after a KPMG partner who died prematurely. This committee was to become the Compagnie's Publicly-Traded Companies Department in July 2001.

Dated October 19, 1993 and entitled Vision of the Future, then incorporated into a working document Corpus USFEC, 10 November 1993.