Reported Speech

[Riverpoet]

Hi there,

I'd need your help with the following: I've just read a meeting minutes document using a sort of reported speech. It seems to have been written by a native speaker of English and it contains this:

"AH stated that Corporate Treasury are discussing reviewing their processes to identify which processes are “key” processes as they believe that some of their processes should be out of scope (eg bank relationships for operating units)."

(just to clarify this: the referred department at a company apparently have been discussing the revision of their processes as they believed not all that had been identified as key process were really that important. So at a meeting they mentioned this to the writer of the minutes that the above extract is from)

Now I am a bit confused because from what I learnt at school I would thought this was not correct grammar. Shouldn't this have been written like this:

" AH stated that Corporate Treasury had been / were discussing reviewing their processes to identify which processes were "key" processes as they believed that some of their processes should have been out of scope (eg bank relationships for operating units)."

Which is correct then?
Thank you!
Rp

[DavyBCN]

Originally Posted by Riverpoet

Hi there,
I'd need your help with the following: I've just read a meeting minutes document using a sort of reported speech. It seems to have been written by a native speaker of English and it contains this:
"AH stated that Corporate Treasury are discussing reviewing their processes to identify which processes are “key” processes as they believe that some of their processes should be out of scope (eg bank relationships for operating units)."
(just to clarify this: the referred department at a company apparently have been discussing the revision of their processes as they believed not all that had been identified as key process were really that important. So at a meeting they mentioned this to the writer of the minutes that the above extract is from)
Now I am a bit confused because from what I learnt at school I would thought this was not correct grammar. Shouldn't this have been written like this:
" AH stated that Corporate Treasury had been / were discussing reviewing their processes to identify which processes were "key" processes as they believed that some of their processes should have been out of scope (eg bank relationships for operating units)."
Which is correct then?
Thank you!
Rp

Both are correct because they are saying (slightly) different things. In the first example the present simple and continuous tenses are used because Corporate Treasury are continuing to review their processes and continue to believe that some of their processes are out of scope. In your second example you are reporting the situation preceeding the present time of reporting, so it leaves open the question of whether Corporate Treasury have finished their reviews or whether these have finished.