The Lord Sikka of Kingswood | |
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 Official portrait, 2022 | |
| Born | 1 August 1951 |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Accounting |
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Prem Nath Sikka, Baron Sikka (born 1 August 1951)[1] is a British-Indian accountant and academic. He holds the position of Professor of Accounting at the University of Sheffield, and is Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex.
Sikka migrated to the UK from India with his family in 1966, and left school two years later with five passes at CSE.[2][3] He has said of his parents that they "were working-class people – and work killed them in the end": his mother died at the age of 53 and his father, a Labour Party activist, died at 59. He then became an accounts clerk with an insurance broker in London. He pursued his education via part-time study, gaining O-levels and A-levels before qualifying as a Chartered Certified Accountant from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants in 1977.[3]
Sikka worked in corporate accountancy during the 1970s, before joining North East London Polytechnic as a lecturer in 1979, where he progressed to become a Senior Lecturer the following year, a Principal Lecturer in 1986, a Reader in 1993, and a professor in 1995, before leaving the institution (now the University of East London) in 1996.[3] In 1982, he earned a master's degree in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics. In 1991, he earned a PhD in accounting from the University of Sheffield. In 1995 he earned a bachelor's degree in Social Sciences from the Open University.[4] In 1996, Sikka joined the faculty of the University of Essex, where he now holds the position of Emeritus Professor. In 2017, he joined the University of Sheffield as Professor of Accounting.[5][6]
Sikka is a co-founder of the Tax Justice Network, and has served as a Senior Adviser to it since its establishment in 2002.[3] Through this he became involved in politics, briefing the Socialist Campaign Group before becoming involved in policy development for Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell during their time as Labour Party leader and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer respectively, working on issues related to tax, corporate governance and executive pay.[2]
He describes his hobbies as "travel, movies, table-tennis, badminton, music, Bollywood (1960s and 1970s), supporting West Ham, afflicting the comfortable and tormenting dinosaurs".[3]
Sikka is an outspoken critic of the accounting profession, particularly with regard to its roles in auditing public corporations and helping transnational corporations avoid taxes. He has written about auditing failures, corporate governance issues, money laundering, insolvency and tax avoidance for The Guardian since 1990. He has also written for The Independent and HuffPost.
Sikka's research has been described as being about the "dark side of capitalism".[6] In May 2017 Sikka featured in the documentary The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire on the UK's relationships with tax havens.[7]
Sikka's active use of the media as an academic to criticise the accounting profession has itself been the subject of academic research.[8]
He was nominated for a life peerage in the 2020 Political Honours and created Baron Sikka, of Kingswood in Basildon in the County of Essex on 10 September.[9]
Sikka's academic research has examined problems in auditing, tax avoidance, corporate social responsibility, and corporate governance. According to Google Scholar, the following academic publications by Sikka have been cited over 100 times as of January 2019:
