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LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS
i
n a time of change the main issues of the day were the formid
able challenges that lay ahead as IIW moved towards a new millennium. In 1996 Prof.
Yuzuru Fujita (Japan) became the first President to be elected from an Asian country while
Mr John Hicks remained on the Executive Council through his new role as the Honorary
Secretary General. Hicks was also entrusted with additional duties as IIW’s Standardisation
Officer. He presumed that this was because Mr Michel Bramat would not only have the
duties of Secretary General to contend with but would also have a substantially expanded
Secretariat to administer.
1
The standardisation role, therefore, was a suitable one for Bramat
to pass on to Hicks, who was now employed directly by the French Institut de Soudure.
No longer responsible for finance, Hicks informed
the Executive Council that the accounts for the year
ending December 1995 had been prepared entirely
by the auditors.
2
These accounts were subsequently
returned to the auditors for re-evaluation since the
figure for bad debts was considered to be too low. This
made a substantial difference to the finances of IIW
and Dr Giulio Costa (Italy), accordingly, as Treasurer
at that time, was to inform the Executive Council
that the financial situation of IIW for 1995 had
deteriorated significantly and that the result was
a deficit of over CHF 100 000, the highest deficit
that IIW had ever had.
3
This was due in part to the restructuring costs in merging the two Secretariats, which
amounted to CHF 48 000 in total. The rest was due to non-payment of membership fees
that generally formed around half to two-thirds of IIW’s annual income. The question of
outstanding fees was a vexatious problem for IIW and had been for many years. Dr Norman
Eaton (Canada), Treasurer of IIW before becoming President in 1990, had spent some
time in analysing the financial threats to IIW during the late 1980s. He then presented his
strategy for future financial planning and control of operations at a meeting of the Executive
Council.
Yuzuru Fujita