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…

Enhancing America’s capital markets, or: thumb off the scale!

SEC Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda recently delivered some remarks at the 53rd Annual Securities Regulation Institute: He noted: Here’s one of those areas: This all sounds much aligned with Canadian regulatory rhetoric over the years. For example, quite recently, in proposing that a certain population of companies be allowed to move from quarterly to semi-annual…

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…