ISSB bulletin: ESG sucks, and it always has!

On the Forbes.com website, Ioannis Ioannou, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, delivered a thoughtful and balanced assessment of the current state of ESG. Here are some extracts: Ioannou concludes: “What’s needed is a deeper recalibration. A shift away from ESG as a branding exercise, and toward ESG as a form…

Measuring expected credit losses: we’ve done enough!

As part of its activities, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) organizes a forum of enforcers from 38 different European jurisdictions, all of whom carry out monitoring and review programs similar to those carried out here by the Canadian Securities Administrators. ESMA a while ago published some extracts from its confidential database of enforcement…

Presenting non-income tax charges, or: close enough in substance?

The upcoming IFRS 18 requires an entity to classify income and expenses included in the statement of profit or loss in one of five categories: operating, investing, financing, income taxes and discontinued operations. The income taxes category includes tax expense or tax income that is included in the statement of profit or loss applying IAS…

The SEC’s retreat on crypto, or: peanut butter on a watermelon

The New York Times recently reported that “that the S.E.C. had eased up on more than 60 percent of the crypto cases that were ongoing when Mr. Trump returned to the White House, moving to pause litigation, lessen penalties or outright dismiss the cases.” It found: “The S.E.C., the top federal regulator that polices wrongdoing…

Review of share-based payment, or: my desktop is yawning…

The UK’s Financial Reporting Council recently issued its thematic review of IFRS Share-based Payment. The report was based on a “desktop review of 20 listed companies with significant share-based payment expenses (covering) annual reports and accounts with year-ends falling between September 2024 and February 2025 (and) companies from a variety of sectors and of various…

On the importance of high-quality valuation information, or: we find value-deficient practices!

The International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) recently issued a Statement on the Importance of High-Quality Valuation Information in Financial Reporting. The document “emphasizes the need for international consistency of high quality valuation information included in financial reporting to provide investors with relevant and reliable financial information.” It describes the following “notable areas where practices…

Risk mitigation accounting: inherently complex!

The IASB has issued Risk Mitigation Accounting, an exposure draft of proposed amendments to IFRS 9 and IFRS 7, open for comment until July 31, 2026. As IASB Chair Andreas Barckow puts it in the news release, the proposed (voluntary) model “aims to bring accounting and risk management closer together to enhance internal efficiency and…