With the cold war over, agents of Britain's secret service are kicking their heels around the corridors of power while awaiting new challenges. A survey of company heads in the current edition of Accountancy Age magazine suggests that, while the poison-tipped biro and rocket launcher build into a tie-pin have limited boardroom applications, the specialist skills of latter-day James Bond's in MI5 and MI6 could be harnessed in the fight against financial fraud.

Some 44 per cent of respondents to a questionnaire on corporate crime, favoured the use of secret tactics to infiltrate companies which refused to report suspicions of financial wrongdoing. But some 39 per cent of finance directors opposed the idea, saying that, while having confidence in the men from the ministry to karate chop their way out of tight corners, they may not have the background and training to muscle in on a balance sheet, leaving miscreants shaken and stirred with brutal questioning of such esoteric conundrums as capital adequacy ratios. With steely-eyed, lantern-jawed accountants licensed to audit, the pen-pushing profession could finally cast off its as dull-as-ditchwater professional persona.