How did the Guérard Viala firm get its start?

C.G. – My career started when, along with Maurice Vallas, I joined the Dutch accounting firm Godfrid van Waveren, whose activity in France was focused on auditing for subsidiaries of Dutch companies and monitoring a market-sharing agreement between industrial groups, which was allowed by regulations at that time. The professional landscape was different back then: auditing was not taken seriously, the technique of the “full audit” was rarely implemented in France, the profession was highly dispersed, and the “Big Eight” of that era only catered to subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies.

We opened the Guérard Vallas consultancy in 1962 and began to develop a French auditing clientele, including in particular a contract with the Atomic Energy Commission which was classified top secret! I have saved the first circularisation letter for an audit, dated 18 May 1963, which is probably the first of its kind for a French auditor.

We became interested in government auditing after the July 1966 law on businesses; the market was very small, and still characterised by the old “daddy’s accountant” approach. The profession had yet to be created. We also had to train and educate companies, especially large groups, many of whom had no idea what this work involved. For example, the financial director of a large wine and spirits firm who had hired us thought that all he had to do was sign the accounting report just before the assembly! Clients also had to be convinced that our work was substantially more than to simply supply a signature – and that it therefore necessitated a substantially higher budget, sometimes twice what they had paid in the past. Our professionalism, still a rarity in the field, allowed us to win some important assignments, including, at the request of the COB, for the Garantie Foncière, in the first big financial scandal of that era.

During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of clients were referred to us by CEGOS, a dominant management consultancy at that time. This firm made frequent proposals for a financial partnership with us, which we always refused. My attitude of wanting to remain an association of independent professionals was vindicated forty years later!

Our profession has changed considerably today. Auditing principles have remained fundamentally the same, and computers have been in use for some time, but the field overall has become more complex. Still, while government auditors today require an enormous number of documents, the process can be approached calmly with the proper expertise in terms of people and tools, particularly software.