Richard Simmons

Richard Simmons, CBE is chairman of the BDP Media Group Limited, a group of "specialist, integrated communications companies".

The Westminster Forum website has this to say about Simmons:

A former partner of Arthur Andersen, Richard has served as adviser to a number of Government ministers. He was co-founder and non-executive director of the Cranfield Information Technology Institute. He is currently a director of Chameleon Nursery Limited; a trustee of the Foundation for Social and Economic Thinking and Acting Chair of Governors at the Moat School. He was formerly Hon Treasurer, Carlton Club Political Committee and a member of the Royal Academy of Arts Development Board. He was awarded the CBE in June 1995 for political and public service.

In an interview with Accountancy Age, Simmons stated of accounting firm Arthur Andersen's collapse:

In a sense, this was just one of a number of events that were the product of the euphoria of the late nineties in financial markets around the world, when there was a divorce between economic performance and people's perception of what was happening. That was the background to the collapse at Enron. It set the climate and wasn't the cause.

Simmons had worked at Arthur Andersen for 30 years, and was also deputy secretary general to the International Accounting Standards Committee. Somewhat presciently in the interview with Accountancy Age, he observed that "what happened to Andersen was what was happening widely; but for the grace of God, others could have gone there too". However, it is not so much the euphoric background to Enron that bothered people, but the hard facts of corporate deception that the accountants did not notice.

Simmons was chairman of the Accountant's Conservative Circle of the Bow Group, which is housed in one of CAN's new Mezzanines, at 32-36 Loman Street, Southwark, London SE1 0EH.

Affiliations

• Westminster Forum, director