CURRENT ACCOUNTING PRACTICE IN THE NETHERLANDS'

“The big Dutch companies and the Dutch accountancy profession have an enviable reputation in the international accounting world. Dutch company accounting standards are considered to be more or less in line with U.S. and U.K. thinking, while the Dutch accountancy profession has gradually been forced to adopt a leading role in accounting standard setting.” It is hardly possible to find more striking sentences which underline the importance of the accountancy profession in my country, the Netherlands. It would of course be very presumptuous for a Dutch accountant to express himself in such a way on his profession. Therefore I am glad that I am able to say that they were not mine. In fact, they were taken from a very authoritative foreign paper, the Financial Times of the 3rd of december ’79. Only on the basis of these lines might it already seem worthwhile for our foreign guests to hear something about the current accounting practice in such an apparently highly reputed country as the Netherlands. However, I am convinced that their curiosity has been still more excited when they read in another reputed paper, the International Herald Tribune of the 11th of january 1980, about “A lone Dutchman’s Crusade in Vintage Nader Style” against the annual accounts of Dutch companies. I hope you will understand my rather delicate position: on the one hand my fellow countrymen would not be glad to see me destroy our apparently splendid international reputation. On the other hand, the saying: there is no smoke without fire, explains that I cannot simply pass over the “Crusade in Vintage Nader Style”. Moreover, as members of this academic group, we are expected to study developments in all objectivity, knowing all relevant facts. So, let us first gather some historic facts about the development of the accounting practice in this country.