IIW History 1990-2015

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

Yuzuru Fujita

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.

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