Anyone who doubts the depth of Trump-era antipathy toward climate-related disclosure might check out the keynote address delivered by SEC Chair Paul Atkins at the Inaugural OECD Roundtable on Global Financial Markets. Here’s an extract: Atkins then goes on to take shots at the “double materiality” regulatory approach promoted under recently passed EU laws: Bloomberg…

A recent article looked at How Directors’ Past Experiences Shape Corporate Climate Policies. It’s written by Sehoon Kim, Bernadette A. Minton and Rohan Williamson, based on their academic research into the premise “that salient and adverse past experiences, such as witnessing the destruction and suffering caused by major natural disasters, can mold individuals’ prosocial preferences.…

The IASB last year issued Climate-related and Other Uncertainties in the Financial Statements, an exposure draft of proposed illustrative examples. The exposure draft proposed “eight examples illustrating how an entity applies the requirements in IFRS Accounting Standards to report the effects of climate-related and other uncertainties in its financial statements (in the expectation) that these…

The retailer WH Smith PLC includes the following accounting policy in its financial statements: Against that backdrop, here’s a recent news release from the company: As reported by BBC News: Accounting Web tried to flesh out the story a bit: It seems that the references to spreadsheets and manual journals and the like are based…

The Ontario Securities Commission recently published its draft Action Plan for Truth and Reconciliation (APTR) for engagement and comment. The news release put it as follows: The document virtually shimmers with commitment, referring to the hiring of Creative Fire, an Indigenous-owned consulting and communications firm, and to “extensive internal and external engagements (including) Indigenous political organizations in…

Just in case you thought the age of Trump couldn’t become any more irrationally regressive… The New York Times reported the following on July 29: The article contains a speculation that the proposed repeal will ultimately be struck down in court, but even if that’s so, it’s clear that a Trump-era E.P.A. will be worse…

As we discussed here, the IASB has issued a revised Practice Statement on management commentary.  The document (of course!) contains a section on materiality: The project feedback statement notes: “Investors have told the IASB that management commentaries sometimes lack focus on matters that are important to a company’s prospects, including in the long term.” To…

Here’s a tentative agenda decision (open for comment until October 6th) arising from an issue recently considered by IFRIC: All of that being the case, the Committee “concluded that the matter described in the request does not have widespread effect. Consequently, the Committee [decided] not to add a standard-setting project to the work plan.” The…

Canada’s IFRS Accounting Standards Discussion Group recently discussed some financial reporting considerations relating to tariffs. The discussion seems to have been almost as long and tortuous as the tariff saga itself, but somewhat more productive. Among much else, the group noted that the imposition of tariffs and related uncertainties at the reporting date may trigger…

The Canadian Securities Administrators recently took a trip down memory lane with CSA Staff Notice 51-366 Regulatory Concerns with Certain Asset or Business Acquisitions It relates to “problematic acquisitions” that “typically have the following attributes:” Key regulatory concerns with these types of transactions include: After that build-up, there’s not actually much to the notice beyond…