Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's accountancy watchdog the FRC being proactive for a change

Has some strange force taken hold at the offices of Britain’s accountancy watchdog?

Could it be that the Financial Reporting Council’s chief executive Stephen Haddrill is preparing to don an orange suit like that worn by The Flash, with plans to join the Financial Conduct Authority's Andrew Bailey (Batman?) and Ofcom’s Sharon White (Wonder Woman?) in a London based regulatory Justice League?

Perhaps not. However, the proactive announcement of a review into its disciplinary process by a watchdog that has up until now looked like a blind snail with a broken leg - it only launched a full investigation into KPMG’s audit of HBoS eight years after the latter’s rescue and bail out - is quite the surprising development.

The FRC says it has responded to "stakeholder feedback" to set up a review of the sanctions imposed through its enforcement proceedings, the reasons for imposing them, whether they are fair, and crucially, whether they are “adequate to safeguard the public interest”.

You would be ever so slightly worried if “stakeholder feedback“ had involved big accountancy firms moaning about the FRC being too tough (it really isn’t).

But this will be an independent review, conducted by an independent panel.

The chair of that panel will be former Court of Appeal judge, Sir Christopher Clarke. He will sit alongside Peter Chambers, who as a former chief executive of Legal & General Investment Management should know a thing or two about corporate governance (which the FRC also oversees), and Andrew Long, another former judge and previous chair of the Regulatory Decisions Committee of the Financial Conduct Authority.

That’s a heavyweight trio, although I would venture to suggest that it is also a very establishment trio. You wouldn’t necessarily expect it to be arguing (as I would) that the sanctions imposed upon miscreant, or even just negligent, accountancy firms need radical reform and should be made very much tougher just for starters.

Good accountants are worth their weight in gold (sometimes quite literally), bad ones can do an awful lot of damage and if bringing the hammer down serves to deter even a handful of them from crossing the line, then that is what should happen.

But perhaps I'm jumping the gun (like The Flash!) and should await the panel’s findings before opining. Who knows, it might spring a surprise. It might even agree with me, albeit in a measured fashion. Perhaps Andrew Tyrie’s Treasury Committee could call in its members for a chat when they release their report.

The fact that it is planned is, regardless, a development that deserves a cautious welcome, albeit one qualified by the phrase “not before time”. I’d imagine the FRC has got rather used to hearing that of late. But that, of course, was prior to Mr Haddrill being struck by the Flash’s Speed Force!