New role pours oil on troubled waters
The Insolvency Practitioners' Association is, for the first time, appointing a director general to liaise between the regulator and its secretariat.
Peter Joyce, previously head of the government insolvency service, is expected to take his place as director general of the country’s second-biggest insolvency body early this year.
Joyce is highly respected in the insolvency community and it is hoped he will help reposition the regulator which has been keeping a relatively low profile so far this year despite the accounting scandals besetting the profession.
He is also expected to coordinate more closely the work of the president, vice-president and council, who fix policy, with the secretariat – the full-time employees who provide the administrative support for the organisation and deliver the policy.
Colin Haig, president of the IPA, told Accountancy Age: ‘Appointing a director general will show the IPA is getting serious. The IPA allowed itself to sink into a low profile and, as the country’s second-largest regulator, that’s not good enough.’
Last year saw a number of high-profile insolvencies, but the IPA has yet to establish itself in the public eye in the same way as other institutes such as the ICAEW.