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After the war
Robert Mazars’ consultancy:
from Rouen to Paris
In 1940, following the military collapse which cut short his second year of business studies, Robert Mazars decided to set up shop in Rouen in modest premises and launched himself into the then unregulated field of accounting.
By 1941, his agency was growing and Robert Mazars hired two young accountants.
In 1942, membership of the French Institute of Chartered Accountants became obligatory in order to practise as an accountant. This required a diploma or professional credential in accounting. Robert Mazars lacked this qualification and had been practising for too brief a time to benefit from transitional measures. He accepted a proposal by the President of the Regional Council of the Order to enter his firm as an intern, which allowed him to acquire the necessary credentials.
It is also at this time that Robert Mazars entered the Resistance, joining a network which provided intelligence to the Allies run by Maître Montier, a corporate attorney.
In 1945 he returned to ‘normal’ life with his consultancy which now employed around a dozen people.
He dedicated part of his time to teaching. He taught finance and accounting at the Rouen Business School for twelve years, as well as evening classes at the Institute of Business Administration in Rouen and Paris.
He began writing articles, participating in seminars and publishing books, thus becoming a well-known specialist in a quickly evolving profession.
He was elected to the Regional Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (OEC) in 1952 and became its president two years later, thus further impacting the evolution of his profession.
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At the end of
1945 Robert Mazars left in one of the first ships bound for the United States, a
“liberty ship”, on a joint mission of the Ministries for Agriculture
and Industry. The aim was to re-establish Franco-American trade
in designer clothing and high-end alcoholic beverages, dormant
for the past five years.
Later, in 1951, Robert Mazars participated in a “mission”
which spent six weeks visiting some thirty companies
in the major industrial cities of the United States, “in
order to reduce the significant gap in productivity
between European and American companies,
within the framework of the Marshall Plan, which he considered
to be an unimaginably generous initiative”.
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