Just heard from Brian Warnes’s daughter that he has passed away. Why is he notable in blog terms?

Brian was a venture capitalist, and engineer and a qualified accountant – an interesting combination. He promoted a way of looking at a business’s financial information to really understand what is going on – without the usual references to dozens of ratio’s. His book will be known to some: ‘The Genghis Khan Guide to Business’ – it sits here right next to me as I write this. Brian himself will be known to those NatWest lending managers who were ‘retrained’ by him at the course that I managed at Durham Business School – the session where Robert Sentance would lend someone a slide-rule if they had forgotten to bring their calculator!

Using the ‘dynamic techniques’ I went on (with Brian’s support) to write the NatWest publication ‘In Control’ - and have subsequently developed these methods for my own business. I use them regularly and have helped many business owners to understand their financial issues. Many have found it useful in helping their staff to understand the money side also.

So I kept in touch with Brian, periodically - and this year’s Xmas card prompted the sad news. Thoughts are with his family – he must have been an interesting guy to live with. He left his mark on a few business people also, even though he didn’t achieve his aim of completely re-inventing the world’s accounting standards!