2004 TREASURER'S REPORT

Ladies and Gentlemen,

	Jean-Louis Derivery

I am happy to be with you today, to present the financial statements of the year 2003. Maybe it is not the same for all of you, as the Treasurer, always in the quest of money, is not usually the most popular person of the Board. The office of the Treasurer is with me, of course, in the Caribbean, but most of the day today operations are being delt with in the Paris office by Christine Francin, who is assistant Treasurer and also Secretary to the President. I am myself frequently in Paris and working closely with my good friend José Damiani, the WBF President. Thus, our work is certainly greatly facilitated, and we have been able to set up a good accounting system, with adequate procedures and control.

In the file made available to you, you have the balance sheet and the statement of revenue and expenditures. We have done better than our budget, cutting part of the expenses and taking advantage of favourable circumstances with our investments. However most of our expenses are made in Euros, and our accounting is in US dollars. It means that we shall cut the exchange losses, but increase our expenses, which because of the severe drop of the US dollars will exceed the budget. One remark: the main part of our basic income is the membership dues, and the figure appearing is what comes from our invoicing based on the number of players given to us by the NBOs. I shall deal with that subject in the second part of my presentation.

The first page of our statement of revenue and expenditures shows that, in 2003, we did cover our current expenses with our own income. The second page deals with special projects, championships, and miscellaneous. It includes all the promotional efforts which we are getting involved into. It means that these events are being subject to the external support of sponsors.

The WBF is lucky to have a President with a very good address book, which allows him to obtain heavy sponsorship from such people as Generali, Société Générale, Louis Vuitton and world winner eBridge, but you all know that this kind of situation may at any time endanger the survival of our external activities: junior events (for which some big Federations are astonishingly reluctant, as it is obviously the future of our game) mandatory communication and promotion, and even our yearly championships.

That is why I would like to draw the attention of this Assembly on the necessity to show a fair disclosure of the figures and pay what they normally owe.

Let me first make a little history: at the Congress in August 2000 in Maastrich, a resolution was passed and voted concerning the membership dues scale. The new dues structure has been changed to $0.5 per registered member from the year 2002 onwards, based on a minimum number of players listed in 2000. The comment of your Executive Board was: “We insist to get your accurate figures, as we have to appear as a strong and clear organisation towards the IOC and GAISF. It is not acceptable to receive lower or equal number: if it is the case, the matter will be seriously considered by the Executive Council with a potential exclusion sanction”.

For the countries with many players, the new regulation meant a substantial increase of the dues, altogether. However, the Executive Council, approved by the Congress, duly estimated at that time that half a dollar per player and per year was not a huge amount to cover the administration of world bridge. Initially that US $0.5 per capita was intended to be paid by the players themselves to promote international bridge, not to be taken from the budget of the federations, as it may represent an important amount if the number of players of the country is high. And I must say that most of the countries have respected the rules. But some have not, and are definitely not providing the right figures. The simplest way to turn the whole thing around is to say that such Federation was allowing in its budget an X amount for the WBF dues, and declares now Y players to reach the X amount (X multiplied by 2). The problem thus is that such a country shows a severe drop in the number of registered players, which is of course very wrong. But we thought of that, of course, and the 2000 resolution was referring to a number of players not lower than the number advertised for 2000. I do not want to embarrass any representative, but this is not fair to the great majority of the member countries who pay their full dues. This is the reason why I would like very much, here in Istanbul, to take the opportunity to meet the representatives of some countries who are not in good standing with us.

Speaking always of figures declared by the member countries, there are two things I want to point out :

I am not playing in this tournament, so please leave a message with the WBF office if you want to see me, or if you have a specific problem on the above.

I am sorry to have bothered you with such trivial matters. I trust however that you will understand my preoccupations. Thank you very much.

Jean-Louis Derivery
WBF Treasurer
Istanbul, 30th October 2004