For the first time in more than a decade, the chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB); an independent body responsible for setting accounting standards, preparing, auditing, or using financial reports, and accounting education; paid a visit to South Africa.

As a 22-year-old student, Professor Kurt Sartorius first set out to South America with an Indiana Jones mindset paddling down the Amazon’s Madeira River. He left describing the experience as one that ‘nearly broke me’. But in July 2022, 50 years later and at the age of 73 years, he found himself returning to paddle the giant river but with his son, Benn Sartorius, Professor Wayne van Zijl CA(SA) and a local Amazonian – and this time with a serious agenda in mind: to fight climate change.

Following the re-establishment of the Financial Reporting Standards Council (FRSC), the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Ebrahim Patel, has appointed members to bolster the integrity of South Africa’s financial reporting ecosystem and promote and enhance the global recognition of the country’s accounting standards.