Mumbai: Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW), a world leading professional membership organization, held its convocation ceremony for the batch of 2014-15 at Taj Palace, Mumbai. The graduation ceremony was attended leading industry stalwarts like Sid Banerjee, Jamil Khatri and Milind Kothari who interacted with the students and gave them advise about their career. The event was a full of mixed emotions running through the batch mates loaded with anxiety and excitement to step out in the real world.

James Crabtree from Financial Times was immaculate as the panel moderator. He managed to put the discussion together by adding the right amount of humour and grace and made the symposium a treat to watch. The former Chairman of Citigroup (Asia Pacific), Mr. Shirish Apte, was the honourable chief guest for the convocation night.

Sid Banerjee (MD at Credit Suisse Bank), Jamil Khatri (Partner at KPMG) and Milind Kothari (Managing Partner at BDO India) were a part of the panel discussing the scope and opportunities for Chartered Accountants for managing growth during turbulent times. They spoke about the changing trends and growing competition and also shared a word or two for encouraging the newly graduated batch.

Justin West, Head Business Development, ICAEW said, “The ICAEW uses a great combination of textual knowledge as well as practical experience to test the abilities of students to manage crisis in a real given scenario. The ICAEW degree gives a lot of importance to developing lateral thinking, professional communication and analytical skills in addition to the accounting. Our endeavour is to train well rounded professionals who would feel at home in any kind of corporate environment.”

Vandana Saxena Poria OBE, CEO of Get Through Guides and a Fellow of the ICAEW adds, “Today almost all senior finance positions are taken up by Chartered Accountants. CAs must understand the source of financial numbers and how they can be used to improve performance, globally.”

Source : Sachin Murdeshwar