Whistleblowers in the spotlight, or: expose thyself!

As we’ve covered before, the KPMG Australia has put whistleblowers in the spotlight. And it appears it may not be over yet: SYDNEY, Aug 14 (Reuters) – “Many, many more” whistleblowers have come forward with reports of misconduct at KPMG Australia, a parliamentary committee probing alleged client data leaks at the firm heard on Friday,…

Reexamining the building blocks, or: something, someone, somewhere…

And now for something completely different – Didrik Thrane-Nielsen, Project Director at European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, recently set out to “trigger some thinking on the basic building blocks in IFRS” by providing new proposed definitions for assets and liabilities, and issuing a challenge: “Please come up with one or more practical example(s) where the…

Executive compensation: the sunlight let us down again!

A couple of decades ago I was doing some work on the topic of executive compensation disclosure, and would have lost count of the number of times I heard the line “sunshine is the best disinfectant” used to justify the effort. As it turns out, it was a slight misquote all along: the actual line,…

Accounting for tariff refunds (or, alternatively, for chaotic idiocy)…

Canada’s IFRS Accounting Standards Discussion Group recently discussed the following only-in-Trump-World scenario: …the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on February 20, 2026, that the U.S. International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not provide the executive branch of government with the authority to impose tariffs. The ruling invalidated tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump imposed in April…

The IASB’s new Chair, Sam Woods (one of them, that is)

A new IASB Chair is announced! His name is Sam Woods, and here’s the bio: Mr. Woods is a recognized leader in international financial regulation, having previously served as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England and Chief Executive Officer of the UK Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). He succeeds Andreas Barckow, whose term as IASB…

More on KPMG Australia, or: Disastergate!

Let’s check in again on the fast-moving KPMG Australia scandal, as handily summed up here: The KPMG Australia scandal began with a whistleblower’s 2024 allegations that senior partners misused confidential Lendlease board documents to gain an unfair edge in winning major audit mandates, including Westpac. The story exploded into the open in 2026 after parliamentary…

Modernizing requirements for public companies; or, slash away!

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) recently published a consultation paper “seeking stakeholder input on potential ways to modernize securities legislation for public companies,” open for a 120-day comment period. Here’s how it sets out one item relevant to the subject matter of this blog. A reminder that in Canada, “venture issuers” generally refers to smaller public…

The IFRS Accountant (there’s really only one!)

I came across a Substack page maintained by The IFRS Accountant… Do I mean an IFRS Accountant, you ask? Well no, in the sense that the author of the blog (who appears to be British) refers to themselves in the third person as such, otherwise maintaining anonymity other than to tell us: “After 35+ years…

More on management-defined performance measure: it was all in private!

Let’s return to the IFRS 18 concept of management-defined performance measures. You’ll recall that the new standard defines such a measure as ‘a subtotal of income and expenses that an entity uses in public communications outside financial statements; to communicate to users of financial statements management’s view of an aspect of the financial performance of…

The truth, the whole truth, and some yap, yap, yap…

Here are some extracts from the keynote speech at the recent IFRS Foundation conference, by Saker Nusseibeh, CEO of Federated Hermes Limited I am told there are some fifty-three jurisdictions represented today in this room and online, including standard setters, regulators and academics. – Which makes you, collectively, the custodians of something I have depended…