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Dear Colleagues,

Winter is now over and I write on the first day of spring expecting soon to have milder temperatures.

The winter was far from inactive.  In Belgium, where we missed representation, a member was found in the Antwerp area with a possible future office in Brussels.

In Eastern Europe, two prospective members, one in Sofia (Bulgaria) and the other in Bucharest (Romania), were visited and reviewed.  Thus the coverage of AGN in the east of Europe is getting complete and substantial.

A European Board Meeting was held on 11th January in Paris to discuss the 2008 budget.  As always we kept in mind “value for money”.

The individual firms European contribution was kept unchanged, i.e. 0.1% of turnover with a minimum of 1500 € and a maximum of 15000 € (the latter figure being the additional bonus for the year).

As a consequence of AGN being an association, the Audit and Accounting Committee was disbanded.  A new committee has been formed to explore the idea of training courses in International Auditing Standards (IAS) and possibly International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).  Through my visits in some Eastern European countries, I strongly believe there is a demand for this training from some members of our association.

Also it was decided that visits to individual member firms should continue (as there are no more cyclical practice reviews) and these now come under the Membership Development Committee.

During this meeting, Liam McQuaid was ratified as Vice Chair of the Board.  Karl Horsburg resigned from the Board but still remains active in the Tax Task Force.  Karl was thanked unanimously for his outstanding contribution to the Board for so many years and his creative and brilliant management of the Tax Committee.

The committees continue as usual to be active for AGN.

	The Business Development Committee, chaired by Werner Kleinle, works closely with a Brussels consultancy firm in attempting to get work from the European institutions for our member firms.
	The IT Committee, chaired by Manuel Satorra, carries on its exceptionally useful work in enlarging the information stored on the regional website.
	The Audit Committee, chaired by Liam McQuaid, after having completed for a part of 2007 peer reviews will now -- as mentioned earlier -- devote itself to training.
	The Tax Committee produces its regular mine of information on differing tax  regimes.  The new chair is Nancy Cruickshank.
	The Membership Development Committee, which I have the honour of chairing, visits prospective new firms in close connection with Nick Blake.

I wish also to strongly emphasise that the administration of the region continues to be very well looked after by the European Executive office in London.

Within a few days I will leave for Kuala Lumpur, not to get some sun at a nearby beach, but to attend the International Board of AGN -- a short stay of 5 days in this busy period of the year.

All these matters, Europe and International, will be reported more in detail in Stockholm by each chair of the Committees and we will be pleased to hear your suggestions.

I do look forward to meeting as many of you as possible in Stockholm.  It is indeed a beautiful city.  We will be able to enjoy the very long daylight in June and meeting each other, which is essential in an organisation like AGN.  Stockholm is easy to reach from practically everywhere in Europe.

Buenos Aires, the location of the next World Congress at the end of September, is indeed further.

In the meantime please receive all my thanks for your continuous support.

François Martin
Chairman, European Region
Caderas Martin
Paris, France
francois.martin@caderas-martin.com

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XBRL stands for eXtensible Business Reporting Language. It is a language for the electronic communication, one of a family of “XML (eXtensible Markup Language)” languages, which is becoming a standard means of communicating information on the internet.

It is an open standard free of licence fees developed by an international non-profit consortium XBRL International.

THE IDEA BEHIND XBRL
The idea behind XBRL is simple. Instead of treating financial information as a block of text – as in a standard internet page or a printed document – it provides an identifying tag for each individual item of data. It is computer readable. The computers can treat XBRL data “intelligently”; they can recognise the information in a XBRL document, select it, analyse it, store it, exchange it with other computers and present it automatically in a variety of ways of users.

WHAT KIND OF ORGANIZATIONS BENEFIT AND USE XBRL?
All types and sizes of organizations can use XBRL in handling financial information in the field of data collection, reporting, consumption and analyses.

For example once data is gathered in XBRL, different types of reports can be produced with minimum efforts saving costs by preparing data. Small businesses also can benefit alongside large ones by standardising and simplifying their assembly and filing of information to the authorities.

TAXONOMY
Taxonomies are dictionaries used by XBRL. They define the specific tags for individual items of data. Taxonomies, which have been officially recognised by XBRL International, can be found on the website www.xbrl.com.

XBRL IFRS GENERAL PURPOSE TAXONOMY
This is a taxonomy issued by IASC Foundation intended to allow profit-oriented entities to prepare XBRL based financial statements according to the International Financial Reporting Standards. This Taxonomy is compliant with the XBRL specification issued by XBRL International.

VOLUME TRANSLATED BY CONSULTATIO KFT
CONSULTATO Kft. has translated the “Labels” of IFRS GP Taxonomy, altogether 4,298 concepts from English to Hungarian. The translation work is displayed by IASB on its site 
http://www.iasb.org/xbrl/translations/downloads_2006.html.

WHY CONSULTATIO KFT. CONSIDERS IMPORTANT FOR OTHER AGN MEMBERS TO BE FAMILIAR WITH XBRL
For 2008, as our Regional Chair (Francois Martin) has communicated to AGN members, a new committee has been raised to explore the idea of providing training courses for member firms that require assistance in the rapidly expanding areas of implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards.

This objective of the committee is right, as over 100 countries have adopted IFRS accounting standards. At the same time we can see that the development of IFRS standards and IFRS based XBRL taxonomies will go hand in hand in the future, while most of IFRS adopting countries are considering adopting and implementing XBRL.

XBRL is fully part of IASC Foundation vision and strategy. Currently the IASC Foundation XBRL Team is redeveloping the existing IFRS taxonomy to reflect the new versions of IFRS’s and the new XBRL technologies.

This means that the IASC Foundation is committed to delivering the IFRS Taxonomy with the same quality and in the same languages as in the development of accounting standards. Adoptions of IFRS’s and of XBRL as developments reinforce each other.

Therefore we suggest for AGN members to be acquainted not only with IFRS standards but XBRL too, and on the other hand dealing with XBRL helps to understand and adopt IFRS’s in our day-to-day work, as well especially in consolidation work for multinational companies.

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GERMANY
NUREMBERG
Schaffer & Partners
Schaffer & Partners business consultancy branch -- Schaffer & Colleagues (S&C) GmbH, Nuremberg -- is specializing in the automotive dealer business.

The team of business consultants is working for various automotive brands such as BMW, Ford of Europe/Ford of Germany as well as for the related captives (industry-owned banking houses).

The S&C experience is based on more than 15 years consultancy in a wide range of projects and even company sizes. The interdisciplinary team, consisting of lawyers and accountants, makes the skills unique.

Key aspects today are company analysis (including heavy mortgaging audits), corporate planning and restructuring, as well as M&A-projects.

There is a new name on the track record: AUDI.

To boost Audis´ strategic goals, the company wants to improve their car dealer partners in several fields of business development. Therefore, they set up a lot of “empowering programs” and offer training and coaching in the areas of sales, technical support and financial advisory/corporate planning and reporting.

S&C, now a part of this huge program, and is the first award winning team in “financial advisory/ corporate planning and reporting” – based on the trained car dealers feed back.

DUSSELDORF
Dr Frankus & Partner
New Partner:  Dr Martin Poggemann
New URL: www.frankus.de

KELHEIM
MTG Group
MTG Group is pleased to announce that Rainer Mueller was appointed the managing partner from 1st January 2008. Mr Mueller specializes in transaction services and international tax advisory. MTG Group now has 6 partners and 12 consultants in 5 offices. The staff now totals 70 persons.

HUNGARY
Consultatio Kft.
We are glad to inform all AGN members that CONSULTATIO Kft. has translated the IASCF’s XBRL IFRS General Purpose Taxonomy from the source language (English) into the target language (Hungarian) according to the agreement for provision on translation services concluded between International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (IASCF) and CONSULTATIO Kft, Hungary.

The leading translator and coordinator of the translation work was László Bartók (see related story).

MALTA
Ciantar Associates
After a long career in the financial sector, Vincent Mercieca has retired as partner from the Firm as from 1st January 2008.   He will, however, still be involved with the firm on a consultancy basis.

As a result, the firm has changed its name to Ciantar Associates. The Firm’s contact partner will be Simon Ciantar.
In addition, the firm wishes to announce that in line with the recent legislation enabling on-line gambling companies to be set up in Malta, and in view of the huge success that this niche market is currently experiencing locally, we have decided to enter this highly specialized market.

As a result we are pleased to announce that we are also offering the following additional services:
•  Consultancy on the application process for an on-line gaming company.
•  Filing of all necessary documentation.
•  Company registration
•  Human resource selection
•  Application processing for staff
•  Auditing
•  Taxation
•  Fiduciary services (Through our subsidiary CRV International Ltd)
•  Accounting and payroll services.
•  Secretarial and back office service.

Enquiries should be made to info@maltafiduciary.com. Or phone on +35699442172.

New Member

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THE NETHERLANDS
Bluestone Accountants & Belastingadviseurs B.V.
Beemdstraat 5
5653 MA Eindhoven
(P.O. Box 7191
5605 JD Eindhoven)
The Netherlands
Tel:  (+31 40) 212 5300
Fax: (+31 40) 212 8412
E-Mail: info@bstone.nl
URL: www.bstone.nl
Contact: Geert van Grimbergen

The firm was founded in 1987 and employs 65, comprising of 4 partners,  49 professionals and 12 admin. staff.  Located in Eindhoven and Weert, the firm provides audit,  accounting, taxation and consultancy work.  The Contact Partner is :  Geert van Grimbergen.

(Ed note: The firm joined at the end of 2007. The announcement of membership was unintentionally omitted in the January issue. Our apologies to the partners at Bluestone.)

BELGIUM
Vyvey & Co
Contact information:
Vaartstraat 9 bus 1
2240 Massenhoven
Belgium
Tel: (+32 14) 61 97 72
Fax: (+32 14) 61 97 77
E-Mail: steven@vyvey-co.be
URL: www.vyvey-co.be
Contact: Steven Vyvey

The firm was founded in 2003 and employs 7, comprising of 1 partner, 5 professionals and 1 admin. staff.  Located in Massenhoven, the firm provides audit, taxation and consultancy work.  The Contact Partner is : Steven Vyvey.

ROMANIA
Bostina & Associates
Contact information:
Str. Aleea Alexandru nr. 20A
Sector 1
Bucharest
Romania
Tel: (+ 40 1) 319 44 66
Fax: (+40 1) 319 48 03
E-Mail: dragos.doros@bostinalawyers.eu
URL: www.bostinalawyers.eu
Contact: Dragos Doros

The firm was founded in 2004 and employs 24, comprising of 3 partners, 18 professionals and 3 admin. staff.  Located in Bucharest, the firm provides accounting, taxation and consultancy work.  The Contact Partner is:  Dragos Doros

UPGRADE
Castle Trust & Management Services Ltd (Gibraltar) has been admitted as Full Members (from Affiliate) after successfully completing the upgrade review.

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