Here’s an issue that doesn’t come up too often, as reported on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s website: A claim by New Brunswick’s Liquor Corporation that its profits last year “remained steady” was true only because of seven extra days it included in its financial year, an issue that needs to be explained in detail, accounting…
Problems arising in assessing the application of one of the key scope exemptions applying to financial instruments Here’s another of the issues discussed in the past by Canada’s IFRS Discussion Group: The scope of IFRS 9 Financial Instruments and of IAS 32 Financial Instruments: Presentation include guidance on when certain contracts to buy or sell…
We’ve already looked in the past at one accounting issue relating to cryptocurrencies, as addressed by CPA Canada’s IFRS Discussion Group. Here’s the background to another one: A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that is used to record transactions over a network of participating computers. The ledger tracks the creation and transfer of cryptocurrencies…
From the integratedreporting.org website, we learn that the Institute of Public Auditors in Germany (Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer in Deutschland) has released a position paper on the future of corporate reporting. It’s only available in German, but one of the authors provides an English-language summary. We’ve covered a couple of the main points before. First is the contention that…
A European example of misapplied standards… Here’s another of the issues arising from extracts of enforcement decisions issued in the past by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) (for more background see here); this is from their 21st edition: The issuer is an IT company which pursued in court another company, Entity X, for…
Here’s the background to another issue recently discussed by CPA Canada’s IFRS Discussion Group: Paragraph 12 of IAS 41 Agriculture states that “[a] biological asset shall be measured on initial recognition and at the end of each reporting period at its fair value less costs to sell [FVLCS], except for the case described in paragraph…
The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) have published for comment Proposed National Instrument 52-112 Non-GAAP and Other Financial Measures Disclosure, which establishes disclosure requirements for issuers that disclose non-GAAP and other financial measures. We’ve covered this topic here many times before (certainly more than I intended to). In a nutshell, the main Canadian regulatory reference point at present…
Let’s take a look at the ongoing discussions relating to presenting unusual or frequent items, taking place as part of the primary financial statements project. The staff paper prepared for the September 2018 IASB meeting sums up the issues and some possible ways ahead. The underlying premise, of course, is: Non–persistent items do not enhance…
A European example of lack of clarity in disclosing corrections of accounting errors As part of its activities, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) organizes a forum of enforcers from 30 different European jurisdictions, all of whom carry out monitoring and review programs similar to those carried out here by the Canadian Securities Administrators.…
At its July 2018 meeting, the Accounting Standards Advisory Forum discussed among many other things, the IASB’s plan to carry out a targeted standards-level review of disclosures. The discussion covered both the Board’s process for developing and drafting disclosure objectives and requirements, and which standards the Board should select for review. On the latter point,…
As we summarized here, the IASB has published for public comment a Discussion Paper on how companies issuing financial instruments should classify them in their financial statements. Last time we looked at this, I mentioned we’d return to the area of presentation. The discussion paper is hard to explain in any kind of plain language (I’m not…
Let’s take a look at some other recent examples of changes resulting from the implementation of IFRS 15. This is from Stantec Inc.: When we looked several years ago at how the standard addresses the key step of determining the transaction price, we noted the following: Among other things, the new standard also requires adjusting the…
