02 April 2007
Sydney, 2 April 2007: Randal Dennings, the partner-in-charge of the Compliance Division at national law firm Clayton Utz, has achieved the highest standing of membership possible from Australia's peak body for compliance professionals.
Randal was officially awarded a fellowship of the Australasian Compliance Institute (ACI) at ACI's annual regulators' conference in Sydney on March 28.
The Federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, presented Randal with his fellowship award before an audience that included representatives of Australia's peak regulatory bodies.
ACI was established in 1996 to promote the development of effective and efficient compliance in Australia. It has over 1600 members and only top compliance professionals achieve fellowship membership.
Randal follows in the footsteps of the late Brian Sharpe, the firm's first national compliance consultant, who received ACI's first honorary fellowship back in 2003.
Randal's fellowship follows his being named ACI's 2006 Honorary Fellow for his efforts to educate and contribute to the development of his fellow compliance professionals. He is currently the only lawyer in private practice to have achieved this honour.
To become a fellow of ACI is a rigorous process involving a number of components. Randal was required to prepare a submission on his compliance experience for the ACI Membership Committee, complete a four-day residential component and produce a 10,000-word independently reviewed monograph that satisfied the requirement of contributing to an advance in knowledge of the compliance profession.
Randal's paper was entitled 'Driving Corporate Change and Behaviour - A Role for Detailed Compliance Metrics'. "The paper investigated the role of compliance in delivering safe corporate innovation," said Randal. Randal particularly investigated the difference between delivering the "form" of compliance and "substantive" compliance and the role of compliance metrics.
Randal said he appreciated the firm's support for the area of compliance, which was coming of age as a profession. "Professionalising compliance is the key to its future. For compliance professionals, this means a combination of intellectual honesty, sound research and experience. We need to make sure that everything we touch as compliance professionals is excellent."
