Congratulations to Mary Keegan, the former PwC partner and chairman of the Accounting Standards Board who was made a dame in the queen’s Birthday Honours this weekend. Dame Mary, interviewed in the last issue of Financial Director, is head of the Government Accountancy Service as well as being FD of the Treasury. It’s good to see that her efforts to bring more sophisticated approaches to financial management in the public sector have been amply rewarded.
Various other gongs are being awarded to top financial people, all of whom are in the public sector. For example:
* Stephen Jones, acting CFO of HMRC who becomes a Companion of the Order of the Bath
* John Thornton, corporate financial controller and head of the accountancy profession at the MoD, who becomes a CBE
* Nicholas Bailey, an accountancy adviser on financial reporting at HM Treasury, who picks up an OBE
* And Clifford Harris, a management accountant in the Serjeant-at-Arms department of the House of Commons, who receives an MBE.
Admittedly, the public sector does rather attract gongs more than the private sector (if only because the inflation-linked pension is barely adequate compensation for the non-commercial salaries endured for many years of dedicated service).
But perhaps this represents more than mere acknowledgement of “public service” and in fact is more of a turning point in how our taxes are spent. Well, it would be nice to think so, anyway.

Ryanair recently signed a deal to buy 27 planes in a deal worth an estimated £960m. It will, according to chief executive Michael O'Leary, make Ryanair the cheapest, greenest, cleanest airline

The planes are to be fitted with technology to reduce the amount of fuel burned and carbon dioxide emitted, bringing the emissions per passenger down by 50%.

Some could confuse Michael O'Leary as anti-green. Afterall, in November last year he described the idea of green taxes on aviation as "horseshit".

However, he has a point. Aviation accounts for 3% of emissions across the EU, compared with 25% from road transport.

Jon Symonds, one of the biggest names in the world of finance, former chairman of the Hundred Group of Finance Directors and chief financial officer of pharmaceuticals giant, AstraZeneca, is heading to pastures new.

Symonds, who joined Zeneca in 1997, played a crucial role in the merger with Astra and became the combined company's CFO in 1998. He will join Goldman Sachs as a managing director in mid-September, leaving his current role at the end of July.

Commentators claim that him being passed over as successor to chief executive Sir Tom McKillop in 2005 lies behind Symonds decision to quit - whatever the reason, his departure is a major blow to AstraZeneca!

We interviewed Symonds in 2004, when he discussed the challenges of moving over to IFRS. And we invterviewed him again 18 months later when he was stepping down from the chairmanship of the Hundred Group.

We wish Mr Symonds luck in what will be a considerably less public-facing role.

If you haven't seen The Times this morning, it's worth a quick glance at the City Diary where Martin Waller has printed a curious picture of an event which took place in the Cayman Islands earlier this year.

The Mr & Ms Universe Caribbean Grand Prix, sponsored by...PricewaterhouseCoopers, no less.

It's good to see that the world's leading accounting firm has an open mind.

It seems that it's a good time to be a finance director - at least it's a good time to be the finance director of a FTSE-100 company.

Research by KPMG (which can be found here) has found that the pay of FTSE-100 FDs rose by a cracking 22% last year. Meanwhile, chief executive pay rose by a mere 3%.

However, the research only looked into 53 FTSE-100 companies which had December 2006 or January 2007 year ends, so we only hope that the remaining companies don't employ FDs who have suffered a 23% pay cut over the previous year...

To see last year's Financial Director salary survey, click here.

Congratulations to Marius Kloppers, the newly-installed 44-year old chief executive of BHP Billiton - the world's largest mining group, with a market capitalisation of around £66bn.

The South African is seen by the City as an ambitious deal maker and, as a result, is preparing itself for some heavyweight M&A activity in the mining sector. A long mooted merger with Rio Tinto could well be in Klopper's sights. (By the way, commiserations to former CFO, and current group president of carbon steel at BHP, Chris Lynch, who we interviewed in our July/August issue last year and had lined up as a potential CEO-candidate).

Kloppers, however, would do well to look over his shoulder. When we spoke to Vladislav Soloviov, the CFO of Russian aluminium producer, Rusal, in November 2005, he was preparing for plenty of growth and activity himself and even pointed to BHP as one of many potential partners, before adding (rather ominously), "a merger is much more difficult than an acquisition because you have to marry your culture".

The now United Company Rusal is due an IPO later this year -  wonder what it will do with all that new found cash...