Was Your Night at the Opera Worth It?

Been invited to Wimbledon this year? Or Glyndebourne? Or the Big Chill? Or have you taken clients to such events? Perhaps not, given the recession, but how would you feel if details of such hospitality became public?

Summer 2009 should be remembered for the major advance in transparency. After the MPs' expenses became public, the BBC voluntarily disclosed its top executives' claims and in future will include lower management tiers in its publication.

The spirit of self-exposure has yet to reach corporate boardrooms, but watch the trend. There are demands for declarations of interest and the receipt of hospitality:

some companies, especially investment managers, already keep internal registers while some public bodies publish lists of gifts received and meals bought.

Companies may think their own affairs are private but they risk being caught in the public sector's disclosure regime. Savills may not reveal it gave six bottles of champagne to a member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee but the Bank's register reveals it (and that she handed the estate agents' gift to staff).

Does being bought lunch or attending a football match corrupt the recipient? Unlikely. If the hospitality puts the recipient at a disadvantage, why has it been accepted?

But the practical issue is not about bribery but appearance. What will be remembered of the BBC expenses disclosure will be petty claims for parking or champagne rather than accusations of unfair influence. It is about wasted money and mean executives, rather than palm-greasing.

And it will be the embarrassment factor that ensures future expense claims by politicians or BBC bosses are modest, honest and beyond reproach. The next batch of MPs' receipts will have no duck houses and BBC managers will ask not only if the accounts department will allow it, but how the newspapers will report it.

Company directors have seen over the years how their pay, share-dealings and employment contracts have moved into the public domain. It would not be surprising to see legislation forcing disclosure of gifts and entertainment; it would even less surprising to see some proponent of transparency make the first move voluntarily and shame others into following.

And for companies that have cut dividends, frozen workers' pay or laid-off staff, reports of directors enjoying freebies or junkets (and the press will bracket working lunches or international conferences with days at the test match and nights at the theatre) will be too much. So much it might even force resignations.

Transparency of hospitality may save a few directors and their wives from attending operas they cannot stand. But it may be no bad thing for business either.

(Pic: Francis Storr cc0.2)