Tag: Milton Segal

In a world marked by heightened economic uncertainty, geopolitical tensions and shifting regulatory landscapes, the demand for integrity and transparency in business has never been greater. As professionals charged with stewardship over financial information, governance frameworks and assurance practices, chartered accountants are not merely working with numbers.

Milton Segal | Executive Director | Standards | South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) | mail me | Sustainability Reporting is about to be revolutionised thanks...

We are all only too aware of the dire state of South Africa’s state-owned power provider - Eskom. We now live in permanent load shedding, and only the stages of load shedding alternate depending on the time of day, energy consumption and how much, or little power is available on the grid at a time.

One of the most contentious and eagerly awaited topics of 2021 is government’s vaccine roll-out plan to immunise South African citizens against COVID-19. Never in recent times has a microscopic germ had such a catastrophic impact on the world.

There are numerous other variations and forms of the above concept, but one clear common theme is that materiality represents a threshold, a gate-keeper and a clear reference to a quantum above which more discretion and judgement may be required.

In March 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a 21-day ‘hard’ lockdown, later to be known as a level 5 lockdown. It certainly caused flutter in the financial markets, forcing almost the entire economy to cease operations and people to be confined to their places of residence.

Financial crime in the world is a significant problem that South Africa and the global community have to deal with on a continual basis. A week hardly passes by where the media doesn’t report on a case involving alleged fraud, corruption or looting of funds that did not end up in the hands they were originally intended. This has the potential to devastate the economic balance.