Canada’s Globe and Mail recently published, on the same day, a couple of interestingly contrasting opinion pieces. The first, titled Small companies risk buckling under the burdens of mandatory sustainability reporting, was by Andrew McLaughlin. Here are some extracts: I’m a senior executive at a small company (under $1-billion market cap) that’s just gone through…

The Canadian Accounting Hall of Fame announces its 2024 inductees! There are eight of them, six of whom are still with us. This is perhaps the most distinctive of the eight summarized bios: Harold Calla’s education and professional experience was the basis for decades-long work to educate and support First Nations build effective governance capacity…

With his “Let’s Stay Connected” address to the European Accounting Association Annual Congress, Andreas Barckow delivers one of the all-time most interesting speeches by an IASB Chair. Rather like identifying the world’s largest gnat, you say? Not at all! I’ll devote the entire space today to some extracts: … today, ‘connectivity’ seems to be everything:…

Let’s take another look at the report published by the University of Sheffield’s Audit Reform Lab, titled Reward for failure: The paradox of audit partners’ record payouts amidst poor audit quality. These are some of its recommendations: We recommend legal separation of audit and non-audit services as the start point for any future reform. The…

As we addressed here, IASB recently issued the exposure draft Contracts for Renewable Energy. We already looked at the proposals relating to applying the ‘own-use’ requirements. The exposure draft also addresses the IFRS 9 hedge accounting requirements, noting that application challenges arise in designating and measuring the hedged item if a contract for renewable electricity…

Auditors failed to raise alarm before 75% of UK corporate collapses, announced the title of a recent Financial Times article. Here’s some of what the article, written by Simon Foy, had to say: Audit firms failed to raise the alarm before three-quarters of big UK corporate collapses since 2010, according to research, raising concerns that…

Five years ago, we looked at the issue of an entity that settles a loan due to a shareholder by issuing equity instruments, and the accounting for the difference between the fair value of the consideration paid and the carrying value of the loan extinguished. Canada’s IFRS Discussion Group (as it was called at the…

The IASB has issued the exposure draft Contracts for Renewable Electricity, with comments requested by August 7, 2024. Here’s part of the summary in the news release: Renewable electricity contracts aim to secure the stability of and access to renewable electricity sources. However, renewable electricity markets have unique characteristics. Renewable electricity sources depend on nature…

As we noted here, the Accounting Café’s Toby York, recently asked: “Could accounting, a field too significant to be left solely to accountants, also be a compelling drama if given a chance? What would be the dramatic narrative?” I passed on some examples provided by others, but failed to pitch in with any of my…

The IFRS Foundation recently issued its 2023 Annual Report, titled Better information for better decisions. This includes its audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2023, and as these must rank among the financial statements for which it would be most embarrassing if anything were identified as being less than state of…