Failure to engage, or: correlation is not causation!

Is the SEC regulating for a pre-AI world? asks the CFA Institute’s Sandy Peters. That’s in an excellent recent article on cfo.com. Here are some extracts: The article provides ample evidence of Atkins’ penchant for sloganeering and lack of intellectual rigour: As we covered here, Atkins has also been taking shots at the IFRS Foundation,…

More specificity on CPAB findings, or: count the infractions!

Canada’s audit regulator, the Canadian Public Accountability Board, recently published its first individual firm inspection reports. This is how the news release put it: The media pounced on the information, with Canadian Accountant contriving the silly headline that “Deloitte Canada comes out on top,” as if CPAB were scoring a weekend golf tournament. This is…

Expectations of company accounts, or: let’s blow it up!

Social Value International has launched a Global Survey on Investors’ Expectations of Company Accounts  The survey explores “whether information reported in company accounts reflects the expectations of those who use them.” It’s open to “anyone whose financial decisions or future income may be affected by how companies perform.” As the news release puts it: The…

The Canadian liabilities gap, or: we’ll never have Paris!

Investors for Paris Compliance recently issued the report Accounting for the Canadian Oil & Gas Liabilities Gap. The organization is “a shareholder advocacy organization that works to hold Canadian publicly-listed companies accountable to their net zero commitments.” The report concludes: The report examined the 15 largest Canadian oil and gas producers in this respect, finding:…

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…